


Castiel and the Yowling Yeti

by Shannon_Kind



Category: Supernatural
Genre: Attempt at Humor, Fluff, It's For a Case, M/M, Sharing a Bed, casefic, deancastropefest, pastry of dubious morality
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-09-22
Updated: 2017-09-22
Packaged: 2018-12-24 02:50:17
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 7
Words: 37,809
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/12003414
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Shannon_Kind/pseuds/Shannon_Kind
Summary: Bigfoot isn’t real. Any hunter worth his salt knows that. And neither is the yeti. So Dean is understandably skeptical when Sam insists there’s an abominable snowman loose at a ski lodge the weekend before Christmas.Before Dean knows what’s happened, he’s stuck in some cutesy winter resort with Cas pretending to be his fiance. Sam’s off on some secret romp of his own, none of the leads make a lick of sense, and every crazy couple in the place is just as interested in solving the mystery as Dean and Cas are.





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

  * For [AutumnSwitch](https://archiveofourown.org/users/AutumnSwitch/gifts), [AnonAnton](https://archiveofourown.org/users/AnonAnton/gifts).



> You know, this is my third bang challenge, and usually, I get to this point where I'm posting in an hour or so and I'm writing up my notes and I'm excited and nervous and anticipating how everyone's going to react.
> 
> This time, I have to say, I'm just genuinely grateful.
> 
> I'm grateful to the [Dean Cas Tropefest](https://deancastropefest.tumblr.com/) mods, Jojo and Muse, for making a challenge I could be proud to be a part of, and dealing with me.
> 
> I'm grateful to [Nox-Lee](http://archiveofourown.org/users/noxlee#_=_) for taking a problematic mess and taking all the "dub" out of the "con," not to mention making the things that were meant as funny—well, actually funny.
> 
> I'm super grateful to [AnonAnton](http://archiveofourown.org/users/AnonAnton/pseuds/AnonAnton) my personal enabler, pocket best friend, and on some days my reason to get out of bed.
> 
> But I'm especially grateful to my artist, Deancebra, who I encourage you to love on [Tumblr](https://deancebra.tumblr.com/) and here on [AO3](http://archiveofourown.org/users/Deancebra/pseuds/Deancebra). I'm sure you'll be especially inclined to do so after you see her art in chapter four.
> 
> Deancebra jumped in for me last second as a pinch hitter and I could not be happier. She has been nothing but supportive and enthusiastic from the moment we started talking, and she really encouraged me to love this story more than I did.
> 
> Link to art on[AO3](http://archiveofourown.org/works/12158148) and [Tumblr](https://deancebra-art.tumblr.com/private/165610553068/tumblr_owo7wmGi2S1wbqq9u).

  
[](https://ibb.co/gbckik)

Something was up with Sam. He’d been acting off for days, ducking down hallways and fleeing any room I came into. It wasn’t unusual for the guy to get a little squirrely sometimes; the two of us didn’t exactly have a childhood full of fluffy kittens or some shit. So I figured he’d keep his mouth shut for a while, but he’d get around to telling me what was bothering him eventually. Frankly, I kind of enjoyed watching him stutter and blush rather than talk to me. 

He probably had a thing for some girl. Every time he’s clammed up about something apocalyptic he’d go all silent. This was more like when he was in highschool about to ask some chick out. He might as well sweat it out a little.

By the fourth day of his weird-as-fuck silence, I was more than a little curious. I’d brought part of the bunker’s arsenal out into the library for a good cleaning, figuring it would keep my hands busy and let me keep an eye out for Sam. 

It turned out, I didn’t have to wait long; Sam came looking for me. 

“So uhm…” he ran his fingers through his shaggy hair, something he usually only did when he was half asleep or worried. Damned if all that hair didn’t fall right back into place. I kept my mouth shut, waiting for Sam to fill the silence, my hands rubbing vegetable oil into the ivory grips of my favorite pistol. “I, uh, I don’t know if you remember…” Sam stuttered out, leaning against the chair opposite where I was sitting. “Well, I know you don’t remember. You were dead. Sorry. But when I was living in Kermit—”

I barked out a laugh; I couldn’t help it. “You lived in a goddamn Muppet.” And yeah, maybe I knew that would make Sam roll his eyes, but so what? I had to get my fun somewhere. That shit was funny.

“I was working as a handyman at that motel when I first got there,” Sam pressed on, ignoring me. Except for the eye roll, “—and there was this guy Tom— Hell, he could have been the place’s handyman just fine, but he wasn’t—”

“Get to the damned point.” I set the gun sharply on the table, fully aware that the sharp sound it made against the wood put a bite in my words. What? It was fun to screw with him.

“Well, Tom still has one of my phone numbers, and apparently he has his own resort now, out by Lake Tahoe, and he wanted to know if I’d be willing to come work for him, at least until he can find someone permanent.”

Damn.

If that wasn’t a fucking punch in the gut.

I should have known that Sammy’s wanderlust—or stay-the-fuck-at-home-lust—would rear its ugly head eventually. I picked my Colt up again, glad that I could field dress the thing blindfolded, because shit, I wasn’t ready to meet Sammy’s eyes after that, but I sure as hell didn’t have a lot of thought to spare. “Is that what this is about?” I asked as flippantly as I could manage. “You want to go play at the perfect suburban life again? Cause I gotta say, I wouldn’t have picked third-rate handyman as your startup career of choice.”

“What? Dean, no. I would have just refused him outright, except for the reason why he needs a new handyman.”

“I’ll bite,” I said, giving half a shrug. “What’s the big reason?”

Sam turned away, studying the book titles on the nearest shelf—although why, I couldn’t begin to guess. Fucking nerd probably had them all memorized anyway. 

“People have died out there. Strange circumstances. I think we should look into it for him. There was a couple, the Shoemakers, who came out to his resort last week. Guy found his wife all torn up, and told Tom he saw a big white creature do it. Two days later, his body was found torn to shreds, just like hers.”

“It was probably one of those, you know… half-polar bear, half-grizzly things.”

“A prizzly,” Sam said, offhand. Because of course he just had to correct me. “I don’t think so. I’m thinking it might be something more like an…abominable snowman.”

I absolutely did not drop my gun in exasperation. If I was stupid enough to do something like that, I’d deserve whatever happened. So I didn’t. But it was a close thing.

“How long have we been doing this, Sam? Freaking decades. Bobby and Dad insisted there was no such thing as a yeti, or a skunk man, or a Sasquatch—unless _you_ count as one of them. And you’ve got this whole big underground hideaway full of books on this crap. Have you ever, _ever_ , seen anything to make you think these things are more than just a bunch of BS?”

Sam around spun to face me, fire in his eyes. “How long did you think angels were BS? Not everything is that simple, Dean.”

That one stung a little, but no way in hell was I going to let Sam see how deeply that cut. I shrugged it off. “Didn’t have the bunker back then. If I did, I’d have known better.”

Sam took a deep, calming breath. Was he shaking? What was the big deal about this case anyway? 

“Okay, fine,” Sam grumbled. “Say it’s not an abominable snowman. What it it’s a werewolf, or-or a shifter or something? I owe it to Tom to check it out, help if I can.”

I nodded. That I could understand. “I can respect that. Call me if you need backup.”

“Well… I kind of already told him you were coming along.” My surprise must have shown, because he rushed to add, “As a guest! Four star accommodations, excellent food—apparently they’re known for their brownies—”

“Do they have pie?” Four-star pie had some possibilities.

“Shit, I don’t know. But if you play your cards right there might be a cute masseuse to help you relax after a long day.”

Damn Sam and his politically-correct gender-neutral pronoun crap. Not that it mattered either way. Cute was cute, right? And it’s not like me and this masseuse had to go and get busy after…it was just, you know, an option. And really, what else did I have going on this weekend? Go on a solo hunt? If I was honest, I was getting too old for that shit. Or sit in the bunker and die of boredom surrounded by books. “Fine,” I sighed. “If helping out this Tom guy means so much to you, I’ll go.”

o0o

Helping Sam seemed like a no-brainer at the time. At least until I got into the garage. I had my bug-out bag in hand, ready to stow in the trunk, but Sam had already filled the car with suitcases. Honest-to-god suitcases! “Planning on letting me bring anything, Samantha?”

“Your suitcase is on the top; you’re already packed, except weapons. I went out and bought us all some winter gear; it gets cold out there.”

What the hell? Like we’d never worked in the winter before.

Wait. “Us all?”

Sam had the grace to look embarrassed. “Well, yeah. I mean, I’ll be busy working. And no one goes on this kind of vacation alone, so I figured we’d invite Cas along.”

Alright, fine. The angel could probably use a vacation. I could agree with the idea. Hell, it might even be kind of hilarious to watch the guy try to relax. But that did not explain Sam’s weird-as-fuck behavior. “Ok. Now what _aren’t_ you telling me?”

Sam shuffled his big feet over the floor, a move I hadn’t seen on him in years. “Uh...well, I’ll be working, right? And you can’t go on a vacation alone. No one does that. It would blow your cover. And...yeah...Tom. I don’t want to freak out all his guests or his staff, having them think the FBI is checking them out. Yeah. So I figured Cas could be your partner on this one.”

I was not impressed. He was still leaving something out.

“See...the whole thing is...shit...it’sacouple’sweekendsoyoucan’tgoalone.”

“What?”

Sam was staring a hole in at the garage floor, his voice small in the big room. “It’s… a couple’s weekend?”

“A couple’s weekend? Like _couple_?! What the fuck?” Now, I’d be lying if I said I’d never had a dirty thought about my best friend. Who hasn’t? You’re in the shower, alone… But that didn’t mean I was going to act on it. And it sure as hell didn’t mean I was okay with Sam setting me up on a gay weekend!

“Well, what about Donna? Or Jody? They have cold winters in Minnesota, Donna wouldn’t even have to buy new shit.”

“Dean,” Sam said, in a completely reasonable voice which made me want to punch him, “it’s the weekend before Christmas. Alex is home from college, and I don’t know if Jody or Alex would kill us first for breaking that up. And Donna will have plans, too. Besides, depending on what we find, wouldn’t it be helpful to have an angel there to take it out?”

I tried to argue, but Sam just pulled out his damn puppy eyes. He really should be too old for those to work at this point. I wanted to call the whole thing off right there, but people were dying, and it was a friend of Sam’s. I wasn’t going to have that on my conscience. 

“Please, Dean. I really want to do this. For Tom. Just go with this one for me.”

Damn it.

o0o

That’s how the three of us ended up crammed in the Impala driving out to Lake Tahoe. The ride took for-fucking-ever. Normally, I would happily pit my Baby against any of those fancy SUVs—over any kind of terrain. She’s got the power and the weight to handle the snow, rain —hell, probably even lava—just fine, but getting her up a mountain in the snow is kind of tricky. Especially with Sam next to me bitching.

I smacked the steering wheel as the car fishtailed around a corner. “Fuck.”

“If I had known the trip by car would be this treacherous, I would have flown us to the resort,” Cas’s voice interrupted from the back seat.

“Yeah, ‘cause walking six miles through the snow between the last possible rest stop and the resort won’t raise any eyebrows. We’re fine. We’re trying to pass for human here, Cas, normal. You think you can do that?” I watched Cas deflate in the rear view mirror. It was like I could see the shadow of his wings, even though they would never fit in the car, drooping right there. Shit. “You’ll be fine. You’ve got a great role model,” I tried to reassure him, shooting him a grin. All I wanted was for him to crack a damn smile, was that too much to ask? Apparently it was, because the guy was glowering back at me.

“Just be yourself, Cas. There’s no one right way to be human.” Of course Sam had to be the voice of reason. “As long as you keep the miracles to a minimum, no one will ever know.” I kind of had to concede that Sam had a point. Not that I’d tell him that. “And don’t worry about trying to prove that you’re in love with Dean.”

“How’s that supposed to work? Isn’t everyone expecting us to be a couple?” asked Cas. The question had been running through my mind, too. 

“Well, it’s just that Tom wasn’t real happy about letting me bring extra people up here, so I told him some sob story about how the two of you are engaged, but you’ve been going through a rough patch and are about ready to break it off. Told him how much it would mean to you, and to me, to have a nice weekend together and try to patch things up.”

I slammed on the brakes, quickly adjusting before the tires locked and the car skidded into the side of the mountain. “Damn it, Sam! Why’d you have to do that?”

I could practically hear the moose shrug. “Come on, Dean! I needed to tell him something. What’s the big deal? Pretext is pretext.”

“What’s the big deal?” It felt like I was choking. If it weren’t for the damn car, and the fact that I’d spent way too much of my life trying to keep Sammy alive to fuck it all up on a whim, I probably would have lost control. “Goddamn it. That’s like twelve extra layers of crap we have to wade through every time we talk to someone.”

Castiel’s hand rested heavily on my shoulder. “It will be fine, Dean. Besides, there’s nothing we can do about it now.”

I fought to keep my eyes on the road while I tried to calm the seething in my chest. If I hadn’t been driving, I would have kicked Sam’s ass. “Fine. What do we know about the vics?”

“According to Tom, Scott Shoemaker, a pharmacy tech, came up last week with his wife, Adriana, a wedding planner.” I couldn’t help it, I gagged a little at that. So fucking suburban and perfect. “Do you want to know the story, or not?” Sam sounded like he was getting pissed. Oh well, he’s the one that got us into this to begin with.

“Fine, lay it on me.”

“By all accounts, Scott was pretty level-headed, didn’t have any patience for fantasy. Supposedly it was pretty weird when he went around accusing Big Foot of killing his wife.”

“It’s possible that a traumatic death could have altered his perception of events,” Cas suggested.

Sam nodded, thoughtful. “True. I guess that’s what we’re here to find out.”

Through the windshield I could just about make out the dark outline of the main building on the other side of a field of snow. The heavy stones and reclaimed wood gave the place a “rustic” feel, the yellow glow coming from the wide windows making it look a lot warmer in there than inside the car. Yuppie rich bastards with too much time on their hands, going out and reconnecting with nature or some shit. I found a parking spot quick enough and grabbed my gear to head in, helping Cas with his.

“You coming, Sammy?” I asked, noticing him hiking up toward one of the outbuildings.

“I’ll catch up with you guys. Some of us are here to work, not get pampered,” he said with a smirk. “Just keep your phone on.”

“We’re all here to work, jackass!” I yelled. Sam must have heard me, but he didn’t bother to answer. Bitch.

o0o

The smell of chocolate was the first thing to hit me when we walked through the main door. It was like walking into the Wonka factory or something. I was almost expecting someone to come out to greet us in a purple suit and tails. It took me a little by surprise, considering we were there to solve a murder, but damn. Chocolate.

“Hi!” The voice that cut through the craving was high-pitched and overly excited. No way is anyone ever really that happy to be at work. The last person I had met like that was Becky Rosen, and she was fucking nuts. “Welcome to the Carnelian Sunset! You must be our late arrivals, Mr. Novak and Mr. Winchester.” What the hell? Sammy had used our real names? Well, mine anyway. And something that Cas could be traced to. Sam was definitely going to hear about that later.

“Uh, yeah…hi. I’m Winchester. He’s Novak,” I hooked a thumb over my shoulder at Cas.

“Dean, I think you might be behaving rudely,” Cas said stuffily from behind me.

The woman behind the desk had the audacity to giggle. “You two are just too cute! I’m Diane, but you guys can call me Di, everyone does!”

“Uh…sure. Hi, Di. So I guess if you’ll just give me the room keys we can get out of your hair.” I tried to be friendly, really I did. But this woman’s perky attitude was throwing me for one hell of a loop.

“Don’t be silly! Now I know you two are a little late for the party, but I’ve taken the liberty of clearing out your schedules for the rest of the afternoon so you can settle in a little. You’ve missed most of today’s activities, but I did a little creative scheduling when I heard you two were coming, and made sure you’ll get all of the important moments for blahblahblah blahblah! Blah blah blah blahblah blah blah blah blah blah!” 

God, I hoped Cas was taking in more of this than I was. Di’s voice was getting on my damned nerves. I was tired from driving, tired from listening to her chirpy voice, and tired from all the bullshit I just knew the “happy couple” were going to have to start spewing soon if we wanted to pull this off. Why the fuck didn’t Sam just say that we were a regular couple? Or try to get me a job, too? Or any of a dozen other options? Damn, I needed a beer.

“Dean?” Cas’s voice was like a soothing balm after the woman’s. “Dean?” Shit, how long had Cas been calling me? He was staring when I looked up, but that wasn’t really a big surprise coming from the angel. Di was staring too, so yeah, Cas had probably been trying to get my attention for a while.

“Yeah, sorry. Just dead on my feet, I guess.” Cas grabbed my bag as well as his own like they were nothing. With his angelic strength, they probably were to him. The woman behind the desk cooed her approval, and I figured we might as well run with it. “Thanks, hon,” I muttered at Cas. It wasn’t particularly sweet, but Di sighed happily anyway.

“I have a good feeling about you two! The feelings are still there, I can tell. You’ll find them this weekend.” I forced an awkward half smile and nodded at her while Cas stepped up and took the room keys. Generic plastic cards with “Carnelian Sunset Resort and Spa” in red ink. It was probably the whole love thing they were trying to go for, but it looked creepy as hell-like blood, to be honest. He stowed the key cards in his pocket, so I guessed I wasn’t going to be opening any doors for him.

She gave us directions to our cabin (really?), and handed Cas a bunch of papers that the poor guy probably had no idea what to do with. Hell, I didn’t know what to do with them either. It’s not like any of us ever checked into anything other than cheap roadside motels, half of which were pay by the hour. “Oooh, one more thing before you go!” Di pulled a covered plate from somewhere under her counter, and lifted off the napkin. The chocolate smell wafted up, even stronger. Sitting on the plate were, without a doubt, the best-looking brownies I had ever fucking seen. For real, these things could have given pie a run for its money. “On the house!” she giggled, “Chef’s specialty.”

Well, of course I took one. I was tired, and chocolate has caffeine. Hell, chocolate is practically coffee. 

Wow.

It was like gooey, fudge-y heaven covered in frosting. So of course I grabbed another. For Cas. Totally for Cas. After all, it wasn’t _my_ fault if I forgot for a minute that angels have no taste buds—so I had to eat it anyway. It just made me look like the doting boyfriend for the lady at the desk, right?

“These are awesome,” I told her. “You guys do care packages for the way home?”

She giggled. “Depends on where home is.”

“Why’s that?” I asked, taking a bite of the second brownie. Crap, I’d have to grab another one for Cas. 

“Cannabis is illegal in some states.” 

Well shit. I’d had pot brownies before, but they always tasted like ass. These were amazing. I grabbed another for Cas while I finished my second. They couldn’t have been that strong, I couldn’t even taste the weed.

“Home’s all over, sister. But I’m sure they’d be gone before anyone caught them.”

She smiled at us. “I’ll see what I can do. You two go rest up, you have a big weekend ahead of you!” I nodded and turned away, ready to follow Cas to our cabin. “Watch out for the abominable snowman, you guys!” she shouted at our backs as we walked out the door.

Well...not the most proactive way to keep people safe from monsters, but I guess they were making a token effort. Damn those brownies were really good.

Before I knew it Cas had led the two of us out to our own little private cabin, carrying both of the bags in one of his hands. If I didn’t know any better, I might have even been impressed.

o0o

The door to what looked like a log cabin had a big golden six on it. Cas slid the creepy red and white key through the digital lock. Once he got us through the door, and I was finished licking the brownie from my fingers, I took a look around and had to admit that the place looked pretty nice. It had more than its fair share of corny romantic bullshit going around—champagne on ice and chocolate covered strawberries on the side table, fucking red rose petals on the bed—and yeah, that was kind of a problem, too; only one bed. But other than that, the place wasn’t bad. The couch that was pushed up against one of the side walls was too short to sleep on, probably trying to push the romantic couple closer together. Or maybe the managers figured they could save on material since anyone crazy enough to come out there for the weekend would be practically sitting in each other’s laps anyway. But it was comfortable enough when I collapsed on it, throwing my feet over the armrest. And hey, since it was that small, chances are it hadn’t been used for any…extra curricular activities.

Across the room, Cas stood next to the small, intricately carved side-table, completely ignoring the chairs right next to it. The bed in question was opposite the front door, with a couple of small doors to the right leading to the bathroom and a big closet we were supposed to be sharing. The rest of the place was pretty bare. The staff must not have been big on cleaning up the mess if some of the guests got overenthusiastic.

I ran my hands over the smooth faux leather and changed my mind—the love seat was probably easy to clean, too. I tried to push that thought as far as I could from my mind, the place was too comfortable for me to have to worry about that kind of crap all weekend. Hopefully Sammy vetted these people, and they at least knew how to disinfect. We would probably have to stay in the place for at least two nights, unless we could find and gank the thing that had killed Adriana and Scott Shoemaker quicker. I did not need to be disgusted the whole time. 

“Would you like something to drink while you recover from your drive?” Cas asked. That was…weird. It was nice of him to ask and all, but how many years had I been driving from one place to another with no break, then jumping right into a case? 

It might have sounded crazy, but Cas was right. This time I did feel like I needed a rest. It was probably that emotional labor shit that people in customer service talk about. My body is used to the job, as physical as it usually is, but my head just wasn’t used to playing some head-over-heels lover. FBI agent, cop, hell even a priest, and I’d have no problems. But trying to wrap my head around this particular cover story was already starting to eat at me.

I sighed, looking for a mini fridge somewhere along the walls. I could tell the place wasn’t a real log cabin; it had modern plumbing and lighting, so it was probably all synthetic wood and god knows what else, but it looked like wood. Something about it felt kind of homey. Maybe it was all those nights holed up in safe houses or squatting. But anyway, the place had that going for it. But no mini bar. “Hell, yes. I need a fucking beer. You see a bar or a mini fridge in here? It’s supposed to be a classy joint, right?”

“According to the literature, there’s no mini-anything, but if we called room service they’d send something up.” 

‘According to the literature.’ It was hard not to roll my eyes, although Cas’s ‘mini-anything’ may have almost gotten a chuckle. I caught him taking another glance at the thick pile of papers they’d handed him at the front desk. “Oh… it seems the kitchens are closed for dinner preparations from now until eight. You could have a glass of the champagne they left for us. It’s not really a champagne, it’s made in California.”

“I’m not gonna drink some damn champagne, Cas. I don’t need something fancy to do the job, I just want a beer.” I may have grabbed up my bag with a little more force than I meant to, unzipping it to start unloading my things. “Damn,” I said, impressed, “this closet is huge.”

I could hear Cas coming up behind me, unzipping his own bag. Okay, what the fuck? These were not my things. Well, some of them were. I mean, the underwear and the jeans were mine, but there were henleys in about five more colors than I owned, and I’d never seen the puffy winter coat before in my life. At least they were all my size.

Even with the new clothes—I still didn’t see why Sam didn’t just pack my regular clothes. I mean, maybe the coat had a purpose, but the rest?—there was plenty of room in the closet for both my stuff and Cas’s. And yeah, that wouldn’t be too weird. Couples did it all the time, right? No big deal. Cas cleared his throat, “If the point is to feel the effects of the alcohol, sparkling white wine has a higher alcoholic content than beer.”

“That’s not the point, Cas. It’s the principle of the thing. Men don’t drink champagne-”

“Sparkling white wine,” he interrupted, reaching past me with a freaking dress shirt and a pair of slacks. And not the ones he’d been wearing since forever. This shirt was a pale green and the tie was a darker green. The pants were still black. 

“Whatever,” I huffed. “When did you get that?”

“I didn’t,” Cas said. “I assumed you and your brother had been shopping.”

“Not me,” I said, hanging another pair of jeans in the closet. At least Sam had packed me enough clothes to last the next few days, it sure took a while to hang them all. Cas had a few other nice shirts in there too. He’d probably get along better in one of my outfits, though. He wouldn’t look half bad in them either. The jeans might be a little long, a little tight against his thighs… he probably had really nice thighs under those slacks. 

Well, he could pull off a t-shirt anyway. Alright, I would probably laugh at him—it would be too damn weird—but at least no one else would.

Well, of course they wouldn’t. Because Cas would look normal. Not because… I stomped on that train of thought. Was it really so hard to get a god-damned beer around here?

Cas was still smoothing out suits in the closet when I flopped into one of the hard chairs at the little table. I tried one of the chocolate covered strawberries. It was surprisingly good. Not delicious fudge brownie good, but good. 

“I don’t understand why it makes a difference. If you want a glass, take it. It’s not like anyone at the resort will think less of you, that’s what it’s there for.”

“Well, yeah. But the whole point for the employees is to get people all hot and bothered, so of course they’re not going to judge.”

“I’m not going to judge either, Dean. I don’t understand why you don’t ‘scratch that itch,’ as they say.”

And how the hell was I supposed explain to an immortal fucking angel that the idea of ‘scratching the itch’ they were thinking of is exactly why I didn’t want to be caught drinking the champagne—white wine—whatever. “You want it so damn much, you drink it.”

Blue eyes stared me down, boring into my fucking soul. It was a challenge, and I damn well wasn’t going to be the first to break. It might have been five seconds. Hell, it might have been five minutes. It really didn’t matter. Eventually, he looked away. Damn right. 

“We won’t be going anywhere for a while,” he said. “I imagine it will keep.”

Weird, dorky little guy. Huh.

I was half tempted to pour a glass, cause let’s face it, if I was going to survive a whole weekend of Cas, I’d need it. But I wasn’t ready to give him that satisfaction. Not when I’d just won the stare-down.

I could hear Cas flipping through his stack of papers while I got up to grab my gun, finally catching my second wind. I honestly hadn’t been too sure we’d get any weapons through security at the front desk. It was in my bag, but no one had even bothered to look. I thought about sitting on the bed to check it and load it, but saw the black silk sheets and thought better of it. Like hell was I sleeping there. Seriously? Black silk? I’d sleep on the damned floor first.

“You can have the bed,” I told Cas, figuring I ought to get that out of the way while I sat stiffly at the table with the box of bullets.

“Don’t be ridiculous,” Cas said, not even bothering to look up. “I’m rarely depleted enough to need sleep, and I doubt this excursion will be particularly taxing; we’re not even sure there’s anything supernatural here. Besides, even if I were to need it, there’s more than enough room on the bed.” He squinted, looking at the bed like it was some important problem to solve. “After all, I’m fairly certain it was made for two.”

I scoffed at that, making sure the safety was on the weapon before holstering it. “Yeah, well…what it’s made for ain’t exactly what we’re here for,” I reminded him. “We got a job to do.”

“Of course, Dean. But you were very insistent in the car that we need to fit in.”

Was he kidding right now? “Well yeah, but not in the room, man. In here we can be just Dean and just Cas. Not, you know, ‘Cas-and-Dean.’” He gave me one hell of a dirty look for that. Damn if his bitch face couldn’t rival Sammy’s. “You know what I mean, damn it.”

“We have to go to dinner,” he said changing the subject.

“You’ve got to go to dinner,” I muttered, rolling my eyes. “I’m calling room service for a beer, I’ll have them send up dinner when they open back up. You gonna pretend to eat? Or should I just get something and say we’re sharing?”

“No, Dean. We have to _go_ to dinner. They’re expecting us at the lodge restaurant, _Aurora_ , for a ‘semi-formal engagement with the other guests,’ in forty minutes.”

I couldn’t help but roll my eyes. Semi-formal crap on top of everything else? It’s not like I’d brought a suit. Hell, I wouldn’t have even brought winter gear if Sam hadn’t packed it. But apparently I had to go out, in just a few minutes, in one of my freaking henleys, trying not to look like the sewer rat at the field mouse party. “The hell with that.”

“Dean Winchester.” There was something in that tone and I couldn’t help but meet Cas’s eyes. He was staring, but not like his normal stares where he’s just like…looking at me, or something. This time he looked like he was truly pissed. Not that I hadn’t been on the receiving end of that a few too many times, but usually those times ended up with me licking my wounds somewhere, so no judgment if I was being justifiably cautious, alright? “Your brother asked you to help him, to help his friend. You and I both agreed to assist him, and that meant going undercover. You are not backing out now.” I’m not sure how he managed it, but his voice went even deeper than normal. I felt my breathing hitch, but pushed that feeling aside. That was not something I was going to get into now.

“Fine,” I growled. “You’re right. I’ll just nap for five minutes, change my shirt, and we can go,” I said, moving toward the god-forsaken hussy bed.

“You’re not going in jeans, Dean. It says semi-formal.”

“Well it’s not like I have anything else! Sam didn’t pack my Fed suit!”

“I’m sure one of the outfits Sam purchased for me will fit you. We’re pretty similar in sizes.”

I shook my head. “It’s not like it’s one size fits all, man,” but I said it quietly. I was not in the mood to be fighting an errant angel of the damn Lord.


	2. Chapter 2

I was not happy with the idea of showing up to dinner looking like a tax accountant of the Lord, but Cas got me to that dinner on time, dressed…well, it wasn’t comfortable, and maybe my boots didn’t exactly go with the pants…but I didn’t look like the complete loser I might have if Cas hadn’t tried dressing me in his clothes. 

He’d seemed pretty interested in getting me to try that green shirt and tie combo, and hell, it turned out I looked pretty damn good in it. It was a little tight, and maybe I was no spring chicken anymore but it’s not like I was past my prime, either. I totally pulled it off. It helped that Castiel’s favorite style of clothes is “too big.” So it wasn’t too far off. Nice thinking, Sammy. Not that it would have hurt him to find Cas some clothes that fit. Cas of course didn’t bother changing out of his outfit yet, so at least one of us was going into this shindig comfortable.

This _Aurora_ place was a nightmare. The kind with two forks and two spoons and fancy fucking table cloths that people get pissed if you put anything down on, even the freaking silverware that was there two seconds ago. Semi-formal? Yeah, right.

Right inside the door some girl was taking our coats, and yeah, okay, I could admit that was kind of classy. But then the host started talking to us. “Oh wonderful, you must be Misters Novak and Winchester. Welcome. We’re so glad you could make it.” Like a fucking robot. 

Cas of course jumped in with his “Thank you so much. We’re glad to be here.” Kiss-ass.

“If you’ll come with me, gentlemen, you’ll be dining at table three tonight. I believe your tablemates have already been seated.”

“Yeah. Thanks, dude,” I said, already knowing this was going to suck more than any fight I’d ever been in.

The guy stiffened. “You can call me Munny,” he said.

I laughed. “Money?”

“Dean,” Cas chastised. Way to go, Angel, be on the waiter’s side. “It’s a long O sound. Munny is a wonderful name. It’s Cambodian.”

“Cambodian.” I repeated woodenly. That was somewhere in Asia, right?

“It means ‘smart,’ doesn’t it?” Cas asked.

The guy lit up like a Christmas display. “It does. I don’t often meet people familiar with my name here!”

Something told me this guy was bad news. If this wasn’t something supernatural, and just regular old murder, my money was on him. He seemed like an asshole. 

I put my hand on Cas’s arm, feeling the cheap, scratchy material under my fingers. All that power hiding under layers of third-rate fabric. It was fucking ridiculous. I had to get him out of that suit. 

Maybe if I would have known Sam was going on a shopping spree I would have put in some requests. The guy deserved a decent outfit. 

That waiter was still simpering at Cas, so I forced the bitchiest smile I could muster. I mean, we had to play up the couple thing, right? “Cas is amazing with languages.”

Cas smiled back at me, and my smile relaxed into something more real. Shit, maybe he was going to be better at this undercover thing than I thought.

Not to be one-upped, when Mo showed us to the table, I pulled out Cas’s chair for him. If nothing else, it was totally worth it for the surprised look I got from Cas. I gave him my best charming smile.

The other four seats at the table were already filled, three guys and a woman. “Hey now, lookit here,” the first guy called out. “If it isn’t our late arrivals! Too bad you missed the orientation this morning. And the start of activities today. Sam and I were having a ball.”

Who was this guy, and why did he know Sam? “Sam and I didn’t get here until about an hour ago, and he was already running off with you guys?” I asked, a little pissed that Sam was having fun when he was supposed to be working. Unless he thought this guy here had information. Maybe they were staying in the room the Shoemakers had been in? Shit, I needed more information than I was getting as a stupid guest.

“What? No, this is my fiancé, Samir,” he said, pointing to the slightly overweight guy next to him. “Say hi, Sam.” The other guy, Sam, grunted and nodded his head. Well, he looked like a barrel of laughs. The first guy shook his head but looked at Samir like he’d forgive him anything. “He’s just shy. Now, I’m Shannon, and this here is Mai,” he said, pointing to the woman, who smiled brightly, “and Hanh.” Hanh reached across and shook my hand. He was in pretty good shape, and definitely had a hell of a grip. Was he involved in the murder somehow? Nah. Probably not. Sammy would find out if any of the guests had been at the hotel the week before, but I wasn’t betting on it.

It took me a second to realize I was supposed to be introducing us to the table. “I’m Dean, and this is my… this is Cas.” Hahn shook his hand too. I may have smirked a little, knowing that, unless the guy really was some sort of monster, Cas could smite him on the spot, no matter how strong he was. I shot a questioning look at Cas anyway, just to see if he sensed anything off about the guy. Cas didn’t react, so I figured we were with average, every-day humans.

“Have you tried the brownies yet?” Mai asked, “They’re amazing.”

I nodded. “Oh yeah, I wouldn’t complain if there were more of those on this trip,” I said, flashing my most charming smile. Hanh put his arm around her, and I really made the effort to back off. It was kind of a struggle. It’s not like I was flirting because she was attractive or anything. She was, but it was just…easier to flirt sometimes. I felt a hand squeeze on my arm, and looked over to see Cas, frowning at me. What the fuck? And then I remembered we were supposed to be there together. Shit.

Deep breath. I could do this. I was a damned professional. If I could pretend to be an insurance adjuster, an FBI agent and a social worker, I could damn well pretend to care about Cas. I kissed his cheek. The rough beginnings of a beard felt weird under my lips. His eyes opened in surprise and he looked at me all soft. 

Well. Well yeah. If he could pull off this couple thing, I damn well could.

“So who do you think killed the Shoemakers?” Shannon asked, surprisingly with a smile.

Samir reached over and lightly smacked him in the arm. “You’re not supposed to talk about it.”

Cas leaned over the table. “Why, was there a warning or something during the orientation? Is the staff trying to keep the deaths quiet?”

Mai and Shannon giggled like he’d said something hilarious, Hanh smirked, and even Samir kind of smiled, which looked like it might be a pretty impressive thing.

“Well I for one am not buying the yeti story,” said Hanh.

“Because yeti don’t exist,” said Samir. I nodded along. It was kind of par for the job, but frankly, yeti really don’t exist. That’s the whole thing. I knew what was out there, and yeti weren’t.

“Because they don’t exist outside of Nepal,” said Mai with a wry grin. I couldn’t help it, I kind of liked her. 

“So what do you boys do?” Shannon asked as they brought out the first course, some kind of spicy chicken soup. 

Cas looked at me, real fear in his eyes. I just smiled back at him. “Cas here is a teacher of religious studies, although I always tell him he looks more like an accountant.” He did not look amused. Whatever, I’m hilarious. “And I…uh…”

“Dean’s always uncomfortable saying he’s a mechanic. But it’s a good, honest job, and he really has a way with cars. His baby is a 1967 Chevy Impala, and he treats her better than he treats me.”

Huh. Way to go, Cas, thinking on his feet. I slung an arm around him, half in thanks for the save and half to make it look good. “I don’t treat you too bad, do I, Sunshine?”

His eyes narrowed. “Depends.” That got another laugh from our motley crew.

“Well now that’s real nice, boys. Now me, I’m a pediatrician.” Shannon was big, broad, and athletic looking. He must have seen me staring, because he chuckled and continued “I know I look scary, but I’m really a teddy bear.” 

I tried not to remember the last ‘teddy bear’ I’d talked to. It had been suicidal. Fluff everywhere. It was ugly, and pretty damned disturbing. Still, there was something about this guy that I could see catering to children, goofing off with them and making them feel better, or threatening whatever was bothering them away. 

“Sam here designs software,” Shannon went on, nodding at his partner.” Most of it’s open source.” The gruff guy nodded again. Real social butterfly.

“Everyone’s job is so important, I feel almost silly by comparison,” Mai said with a grin. “I’m just a copywriter for a fashion magazine no one’s ever heard of.”

“Don’t you dare say that,” Hanh said. “Mochi magazine is important and empowering.” She acted like she was blushing, but this exchange between husband and wife had obviously been rehearsed and performed a dozen times. I knew I was probably supposed to ask what Mochi magazine was, but I didn’t want to, I wasn’t interested. Cas did it for me. And of course they told him, which took most of the soup course. It actually sounded interesting, if, you know, I read magazines.

The second course was cucumbers and carrots in a bowl. Rabbit food? Seriously? How is that high class? I scowled at it, waiting for it to turn into real food. Cas kicked me under the table, and when I looked he was lifting a bite to his mouth with I couldn’t guess which of the forks. I had to copy everyone else to figure out which one I was supposed to use. I guess that counts as classy. It wasn’t terrible, but there still wasn’t any meat. I was getting antsy, and I think Cas could tell, because he put his hand on my shoulder.

Cas kept rhythmically eating it all, even though it must not matter when everything tastes the same. I was just hoping they brought out a steak or something soon. 

There was more small talk about Hanh’s job. He was a tennis instructor and thought he was hot shit. Maybe he was. But tennis? Really? 

This small talk was getting old, I really needed to move on and start asking about the case. “We weren’t sure we were coming, for a while. Did you guys hear what happened last weekend?” I started.

“No! What happened?” asked Mai, leaning forward, her fork halfway to her mouth.

“We don’t want to scare anyone,” Cas said, maybe laying it on a little too thick, “but we heard that a couple here was murdered.”

The group relaxed, smiling at us. “Oh, that,” Mai said.

“You two really had me worried for a moment,” Shannon said, cuffing Cas on the arm like they were old friends.

Okay, that was suspicious as fuck. Either these guys were all amatuer sluths or they were all suspects. “So are you guys all part of some detective hobby group?” I asked.

They freaking laughed at me. I was getting real sick of this particular table. “No,” said Shannon, “but now that would be fun, wouldn’t it Sam?” Samir shrugged, which from him was probably as close to a yes as Shannon was going to get.

“Oh, yes! We could get a group together and come another weekend!” Mai said.

“What do you mean?” Cas asked. “Does this kind of thing happen here often?” Well, at least they laughed at him, too. I supposed that since they wanted to come back here again with some crime solving buddies put them more in the weird category than the dangerous one.

By the time they brought out the ribs—which were actually awesome—I was practically itching to go. Hopefully Sammy had found something better, poking around with the employees. Why were we even wasting our time on the other guests, when there was something out there, killing people? Sure, people never think it will happen to them, so they weren’t scared, fine. But these people just seemed to think it was a joke. It was really putting me off my dinner.

Until dessert. Those brownies made it better. I was probably on my fourth before Cas steered me back to our cabin. He hadn’t swiped any for me for later, which was a jackass move, but whatever.

o0o

There was no beer, no brownies, and no god damn leads when we got back to our room. Nothing to do but check in with Sam and sleep for a few hours.

“I’ll only need like four hours and I’ll be good to start poking around the place. But it’d be stupid to start without talking to Sam about what he’s already found out,” I told Cas, pulling out my phone.

“Only four hours? You may want to get a little more, if we're going to follow our itinerary for tomorrow.”

“I’m sorry, our what now?”

Cas pulled out a piece of paper that he’d had stuffed in his pants pocket. It had the hotel logo in red at the top. Stationary. “It says here breakfast will be delivered to the room at seven.”

“Seven? In the morning?” They must have been kidding.

“You’ve gotten by on far less sleep on a hunt. Weren’t you just bragging about only needing four hours?”

“Well yeah. It’s not the sleep, it’s the principle of the thing. This is supposed to be some high class fancy shit.”

Cas was not amused. He kept reading. “At nine there’s a painting class.”

“Good, you go to that, I’ll work the case,” I said, picking through my duffel looking for the toiletries bag.

“It’s a couple’s painting class. I don’t know what that means, but I assume we both have to be there.”

Ugh. I rolled my eyes and pointed at Cas. “Fine, but if it’s weird, I’m out of there.”

You know that feeling you get when someone’s staring at you? Not the creepy one that says some monster is going to gank your ass, but the one where you know if you turn around you’ll see someone’s eyes. I didn’t turn around, didn’t say anything, but I could _feel_ him there, quiet, watching. Finally I found what I was looking for and turned for the bathroom. I knew he was still focused on me. The idea of him staring at the bathroom door while I did my business wasn’t making me feel any better. “What, man?” I asked, hoping to get through this quick. 

“The couple thing. I’m worried about it. Do you think, at dinner, that people believed we were a real couple?”

I sighed and forced my body to relax. It was a fair question. Totally relevant to what we were doing. Cas needed feedback if he was going to keep this up until we got rid of whatever had killed those people. It took a second, but I was able to put on a smile for him. “You’re a natural.” Cas looked down. He wasn’t blushing, was he? Nah, couldn’t be. “Besides, if people will believe that Samir guy who never opened his damned mouth was in love with anyone, they’ll believe it about us.” I started toward the bathroom, ready to piss and brush my teeth before I called my brother.

“Samir was shy.” Cas spoke slowly, like he was weighing the word before he spoke. “Sometimes it’s hard for me to talk to people in social situations. I still find it awkward. But I would hope you and Sam don’t take my reticence as a personal affront.”

“No, of course not!” I didn’t want him going around thinking shit like that. Hell, I’d been human my whole life, he’d only spent like, little spurts here and there on earth. Of course it still felt weird.

“Besides,” he continued, smiling at me a little “I don’t think you need to talk all the time to have a profound bond.” I stopped short, feeling like ice water running down my back. Shit, I hadn’t heard that phrase in a long time.

“Yeah, well,” I felt like every word was forced over an apple-sized stone in my chest. “I hear communication is important in relationships.” I didn’t wait for Cas to respond, just strode into the bathroom to do my business. I may have spent a little longer in there than I normally would have. That was for Cas though. Completely. The angel had a lot of shit on his mind to work out, and I had spent enough time in crappy motels with my brother to know sometimes you just gotta give a guy some space.

When I came out, Cas went on reading like nothing had happened. Clearly, my plan had worked. “At half past twelve someone from the wait staff will come to collect us for a historical tour ending with a picnic by the pond.”

“The frozen one we saw on our way up here?”

“Presumably.”

“How the fuck are you supposed to have a picnic in the damned winter?”

Cas shrugged. “I think it’s supposed to be romantic. Sam did pack us appropriate outerwear.”

“Sounds stupid to me.” At least if it really was meant to be romantic, the waiter would probably leave us alone. Maybe then we could get some work done. It felt like someone was watching us every damn minute. What was even the point of Cas and me coming out here if we weren’t going to be any damned help?

“And then…oh.”

“What oh?”

“I think it’s supposed to be time for us to come to our cabin and have sexual relations.”

I grabbed the paper from his hand. “It says that?” Holy shit!

“No,” Cas said, taking it back calmly, “but it’s heavily implied.”

“My foot’s going to be heavily implied in your ass if you don’t get to the end of that damned list.”

The look he gave me was pure fucking sex. If, you know, that’s what we had going. 

“And then dinner,” he said, like my dick hadn’t had completely different plans for half a second. “I think that’s enough for now. We’ll see where we are tomorrow night before we start talking about Sunday.”

“Fine. I’m calling Sam.”

“Of course.”

The phone rang about three times before Sam picked it up. He sounded winded as hell. “You ok?” I asked.

“Yeah, I’m good. Just working. They got me doing all kinds of shit out here. I’m super busy, don’t know if or when I’ll catch up with you guys.” Cas was watching me, thinking. It was weird. But I was kind of used to that from him. 

“Well have you heard anything from the staff?”

“I’ve talked to a bunch of them—Tom, and some of his employees—but I haven’t gotten anything useful. No one mentioned any other monster sightings before last weekend, but I’m not ready to give up just yet.”

“Yeah, I know, this is for your buddy.” Cas had focused on his schedule again, and my eyes ran over his body for a minute. The angel was probably the best friend I had, as much as he pissed me off sometimes. I would do just about anything for the asshole. Not that I’d admit it. Cas was family. “Alright, I want to head down to the morgue tomorrow, I think we have some time… when Cas?”

He still had the paper, and fit a trip to town into the schedule quick enough. “I doubt the painting class will last more than an hour. We could probably make it to the morgue by ten thirty, ten forty-five the latest.”

“Perfect. We’ll hit it tomorrow morning after,” I choked a little on the words, “painting class.”

“What? No! Dean you can’t do that!”

“What the hell?”

“No, I mean… if you go off the property it’ll look suspicious. I’ll hit the morgue first thing and let you know what I find when I talk to the coroner.”

“Don’t you have like a shit-ton of work to do?”

“Well, yeah. Uh…but I mean, they can’t work me 24/7. I’ll just work a little late tonight and take an hour or two tomorrow to go into town.”

“What the hell is going on with you, Sam?” Cas was looking at me all confused and worried. It wasn’t something to be worried about, not yet, but it was weird as fuck. 

I could hear a soft voice saying something on the other end of the line. A very female soft voice. It was too far away from the phone for me to make out what she was saying. “I’ll be right back!” he shouted back at her. Yeah, uh...I gotta get...get back to work. I’ll talk to you tomorrow.”

The line went dead. Sammy, you dog!

“What is wrong with your brother?” Cas asked, looking at me gravely.

I scoffed. “Probably nothing. He was acting a little shifty, but I think he’s got a girl with him. Taking a little time off tonight.”

“A girl,” Cas said. It wasn’t a question, so I didn’t give it an answer.

“You’re thinking pretty hard there, Cas,” I said, noticing his serious look was directed past me and to the wall.

“I think I should patrol the area during the evening.”

I stood and reached for my coat. “Not a bad idea.”

“Stay here,” he said, blocking my arm. There was an undercurrent of command in his voice.

I rolled my eyes and tried to push past him. “Yeah right. We have no idea what’s out there, Cas. If we get it, we can get the hell out of here. I’m all for hunting this thing down tonight.”

He shook his head. “And if we don’t find it tonight, the employees and other guests will expect to see us tomorrow. I don’t need to sleep. You do.”

“Sure, but it’s still early. If we gank this thing now, maybe we can even avoid sleeping on those tacky sheets.”

“No, Dean.” With that, he stepped out of the cabin. Just right into the snow in his suit and trench. Sure, the guy doesn’t feel the cold like the rest of us puny humans, but he could at least make a show of it when he leaves the building. 

He flew away. I took a quick look, hoping no one had caught him, but I didn’t hear any screams, so I figured we were safe from nosy humans.

It was still too early to go to bed. I gave up and looked out the window. I couldn’t see Cas anywhere on the grounds. I wasn’t, like, worried or anything. Cas was a full-grown Angel of the Lord, and he could take care of himself. It’s just that, when Cas was around, I was used to knowing where he was, more or less.

After a half hour of staring at the table, I opened the stupid swanky bottle of champagne. One glass turned into two, then three, then most of the bottle. I’m pretty sure the strawberries were still cold. There was ice underneath them still anyway. I didn’t notice when I’d finished them.

It was maybe an hour after I’d finished everything on the table that I decided to hell with it and crawled into the bed. Found out that even though those sheets looked tacky as fuck, they were actually pretty damn comfortable. Almost as good as memory foam.

Sucks for you, Cas. Maybe you should have come home or something.

o0o

Cas still wasn’t around when the wakeup call came for breakfast. Maybe enough guests woke up with morning sex or something that the employees didn’t make a big deal out of us not answering the door, and left breakfast in a warming tray just inside. Hell, maybe they thought Cas was in the bathroom. I sure as hell wasn’t going to correct them. Of course, if Cas didn’t show up soon, I didn’t know what I was supposed to do.

I didn’t want to call Cas. If he’d found a lead I didn’t want a ringing phone to be the thing that screwed him over.

I decided I was too hungry to worry about it; I would figure it out after breakfast.

The food wasn’t quite as fancy as the night before, thank god. A couple of omelets, some toast, and sausage. All things I could get at any diner. It was still better than hitting up the motel snack machine for a bag of Cheetos. It was a good thing Sam had an in with his buddy, otherwise this stay would be way out of our budget, even on one of the scam credit cards. 

Since he wasn’t there, and probably wouldn’t have eaten it anyway, I ate Cas’s share of the sausage. It was good. Not good like pie, or those brownies they make, but good. Cas wasn’t eating it. Hell, he mostly just ate to keep up appearances anyway, he wouldn’t miss it. Besides, it made it look like both of us were there for breakfast, right? Right.

I wasn’t going to go to the stupid painting class. There was no point in going alone. Who knew what weird shit Cas was stuck doing? For all I knew, he’d gotten called back to Heaven and they were having him do some weird shit for them. 

But then again, Sam had trusted me not to screw this up for his buddy. And people were dead, there was no getting around that. And at this rate, the best chance I had to find Cas was to do exactly what we had planned last night, talk to people and look for clues. If there was something wrong, I’d find him. If there wasn’t, he’d at least know where I’d be.

I still waited as long as I could before leaving for the lodge. It would have been easier if Cas came back. Not that I needed him, or any backup at all, really. I had hunted on my own plenty of times, and these were probably just everyday people, anyway. I wasn’t scared.

It was just the look of the thing. The other couples and employees. They knew Cas and I were going through a rough time. And then Cas just up and left.

No! That wasn’t what had happened at all. That was the back story. That was it. Get your shit together, Dean!

The winter coat I had unpacked the night before was sitting in the closet. It was huge as hell, all puffed up like a god damned marshmallow. At least it was brown. It had a couple of pockets, but nowhere decent to carry a weapon. I stuck a silver knife in my boot, and my pistol down the back of my pants, then headed out into the snow.

Di at the front desk directed me to a room off the left of the main entrance. She shot me some kind of an amused smile, which was better than the pity I’d been expecting.

There were four people in the room when I got there: three women, all surrounding Cas. How come he was there when he had never showed up in the room after patrol last night? He turned and saw me. “There he is,” Cas said, smiling brightly. What the hell? 

He walked up to me and kissed me on the cheek. I was in shock. I probably just stared at him for at least a minute. “Come here, Dean. Let me introduce you to Liza and Orinda.” Maybe I smiled. I couldn’t be sure. I must have smiled.

“It’s so nice to meet Cas’s beau.”

“Your _khosn_ is terribly charming,” one of the women, I wasn’t sure which, told me.

I wanted to call Cas out, ask him where the hell he had been all night. But here were these women circling like optimistic vultures. “He’s not my cousin,” I blurted, still trying to figure out what I was supposed to say, what I _could_ say to Cas with them there. The two women shared some kind of look; damned if I could tell what it was supposed to be, but they seemed happy enough.

“It means fiancé, Dean,” Cas said putting his arm around me and leading me further into the room. Okay, where the fuck did that come from? I turned to give him a piece of my mind, but Cas’s eyes darted quickly between the two women who’d just been talking, even though I didn’t know which was which, and the third woman in the room.

“As soon as we get out of here you’re telling me what the hell took so long last night,” I whispered.

He nodded. “Of course,” he whispered back. Then louder, “These are the lovely Regenbogens. That’s Liza,” he said pointing to the woman with the shorter hair, “she works in child care.” She smiled prettily. “And that’s Orinda, a professor of Hebrew and Israeli literature.”

Damn. “Sounds like you guys have a lot to talk about.” He was being so damned reasonable I couldn’t stay mad. Maybe he did have a good reason for ditching me last night. Didn’t mean I wasn’t going to dig for it as soon as we got out of this stupid waste-of-time class. 

I ducked out of Cas’s grip as casually as I could. I was hoping I wouldn’t need my weapons, but if I did, Cas wasn’t exactly making it easy for me to get to them. Cas looked hurt when I stepped away, so I turned and flashed him the gun as quietly as possible.

Wait. No. It was all for show. Of course he wasn’t hurt. God this place was fucking with me, and we hadn’t even been there twenty-four hours.

“Well, now that we’re all here,” said the woman who had been quiet the whole time, getting all of our attentions at once, “we should get started. My name is Rosa Gaona, and I’m one of the activities directors here at Carnelian Sunset. Today, I’m going to help you to create a work of art that you’ll be proud to hang in your home. It doesn’t matter if you’re a regular Frida Kahlo, or you’ve never touched a paintbrush at all.” 

Well good, because I’d be in the second category; the one that didn’t know what the hell Fritos had to do with painting.

“You’ll be working together on this project, trying to feel out what makes your partner unique and special, and adding it to the painting. It doesn’t have to be realistic, it could be symbolic. Let’s start with mixing colors. I want you each to mix a shade as close as you can to your partner’s eyes. I’ll be around to help. We’ll use these colors to create the background of your artwork.”

And like that, I guess we were painting. Cas took forever looking through greens and holding them up to my face. I just grabbed the first blue I saw. “Just tell me everything’s okay. You never came back last night. Did you get a lead or something?”

“I didn’t realize I would cause you alarm, I told you I would be out while you slept.”

“But why didn’t you come back?” It sounded whiny, even to me. He didn’t answer, he just raised an eyebrow at me and mixed a little more yellow into his green. Then added the same amount of green right back. I have no idea what the point of that was, but he seemed satisfied. The slap of the metal mixing tool against the palette was kind of calming, but mostly frustrating. What did it matter if I painted something the color of Cas’s eyes? Yeah, they were pretty I guess, but that wasn’t why we were fucking here!

Rosa looked over my shoulder. “That’s a much darker shade than I would have chosen for Cas’s eyes. Usually when someone chooses to go darker, it subconsciously means they feel especially…passionate about their partner.” I coughed and grabbed the white, sure my cheeks were on fire. She took the paint tube from me and replaced it with a lighter shade of blue. “Mix these together, I think that will do the trick.”

The Regenbogens were chatting quietly not far away, their small smiles at one another the furthest thing from my mind. Rosa mumbled something to Castiel about his color choices, but something across the room had caught my eye. Set up in a corner was what looked like a sample of the painting we were supposed to be working on. The background was a wash of muddy browns—I guess not everyone's as lucky as I am, finding someone with eyes as striking as Cas’s.

Or…whatever. 

It was a sample painting. They were probably just being multicultural or something. 

The thing is, not that I’d taken any kind of classes like this before, but if that was the example, shouldn’t it be up front and center, not off in a corner? I walked over to get a closer look.

There were white blotches in the painting, flecks of something that shone kind of gold. The whole thing was painted in haphazardly, like whoever had done it wasn’t really good with a brush, but there was a kind of charm to it. Black lines curled across the painting, almost forming hearts in some places.

“Tragic, isn’t it?” said a voice behind me. I turned to see Rosa staring at the painting with me. She smiled up at me like I’d done some kind of trick. “The Shoemakers never came back for it, so it was left in here.”

I eyed the painting, then her. “Why wouldn’t you just throw it out, or send it to their next of kin?”

“Why would we do that?” She looked legitimately confused. I turned to walk back to Cas and my painting in progress. I couldn’t believe she’d kept the painting, but that didn’t make her a monster. I was still going to drop her name off to Sam, just in case. He was supposed to be doing background checks whenever he had time off, and interrogating the staff as quietly as he could while he worked. I’d give him that Munny guy’s name too, come to think of it. I bet Sam could dig up a lot of dirt on that guy.

Rosa kept talking, and now everyone had stopped painting and was gathered around in this awkward, morbid little huddle. “I remember Adriana saying the black whorls were supposed to be like shoelaces, for their last name. And the gold was Scott’s way of showing that he got all the riches that mattered when he married her.” Liza and Orinda giggled and cooed in the background. It was pretty damned disrespectful. Everyone here was fucking weird. “I don’t recall what the white was about, but they must have both felt strongly about it. It’s a shame, since they were killed by a fluffy white monster.”

Okay. Look, I know there are special vacations and hotels and shit where they’re like, “Yeah, this place is haunted, come visit!” And usually they’re bullshit but sometimes they’re not, and my advice to pretty much anyone with no experience with this shit is to stay the fuck away.

But those are all old stories, not stories from last fucking week. Honestly, shouldn’t they be trying to hush up the whole thing? Usually I had to work a lot harder to get information from people. This Rosa chick was definitely a little strange.

Here’s the thing. People don’t like to talk about creepy things. That’s just human nature. And maybe this Rosa was the exception, but my experience was telling me she was rambling on because of nerves. Was she nervous about being hurt, or nervous about being caught?

“Did they say anything when they were in your class?” Liza asked. “About why someone might want them dead?” I shot a glance over at Cas. This couldn’t be for real; was he seeing it too? He just shook his head and looked pointedly at Rosa. I mean, I guess it wasn’t such a bad thing, if someone else wanted to ask questions we’d at least look a little less weird poking around.

Rosa thought for a minute. “Well, Ms. Shoemaker was an event planner. She seemed very interested in bringing more large events to the hotel if the management was interested. I can’t imagine anyone around here holding issue with that.”

“Okay. What about Mr. Shoemaker?” Orinda asked. 

“He didn’t talk so much. But he was very supportive of his wife’s ideas. I was hoping we’d be able to bring in a lot more business. It would have been nice.” 

“So what makes you think they were killed by a monster?” I asked.

“An abominable snowman!” she said, like that cleared something up. “Well, I’ve heard terrible things about what lives around here. Several staff members have seen something big and white running through the woods! I’ve seen it myself. It’s terrifying. I won’t go out there alone.”

The instructor walked away, and suddenly it was like no one had gathered at the weird death-painting at all. Cas went back to making broad sweeping strokes of green over the canvas. The Regenbogen’s went back to mixing colors. 

I watched Cas paint. He was so fucking stubborn. Wouldn’t look at me, completely focused on the painting. I rolled my eyes and started mixing in the lighter blue that Rosa had handed me. The lighter color mixed into the darker with little scrapes from the metal mixing thing they gave me. I guess they didn’t want me fucking up their paint brush. I held it up, trying to gauge how well it matched his eyes without being obvious about it. 

It was way too damn light now. I added some more of the first blue. That didn’t work any better. How the hell come it worked when Cas did it? Now it was too dark. I grabbed another blue off the table. What the hell? It’s not like it would ever look like Cas’s eyes anyway. They weren’t even human. Sometimes the light from his grace just shone right out of them and it was just...awesome. 

God this was bullshit. I slammed the palate on the table in disgust. Cas kept on working, as if painting some metaphor for my soul would help us keep other people from being knocked off. “I need to call my brother.”

“I’m sure it can wait for later, Dean. I’ll be done here soon, and you’ll need to add your color to the background.”

What the hell was Cas thinking? People were dying, and he wanted to sit here mixing colors together. “It’s important, man.”

“More important than our relationship?” Cas asked loudly, staring me down. Three other sets of eyes turned to stare at me. When did this become the fucking Twilight Zone?

“This class is a waste of time, Cas,” I insisted. “Our lives aren’t meant to be ‘pretty.’ We get shit done. Being _here_ is not getting shit done.”

Cas huffed. He god-damned huffed. “You spoke to him your brother night, and I know I heard him tell you what he’d be doing today. Stop acting like a child. Sam was nice enough to get us set up here for a long weekend. The staff here has done a lot of research, and the literature they provided impressed on me the importance of this exercise in strengthening our relationship.”

What the hell was he even talking about? Fuck this class; fuck him. I was not acting like a child. I was concerned about the people I care about. So sue me. I ran from that room straight through the reception area, hardly stopping to grab my coat.

Sam’s phone only rang once. “Dean? What’s wrong?”

I had no answer. There’s no way I was telling him that Cas was acting like we were really together, and it was kind of freaking me out. “Cas is acting weird—it’s like he forgot why we’re here.” There, that sounded like a reasonable excuse to call. “Maybe this _is_ our kind of gig, ‘cause what the hell is powerful enough to delude a mostly-full-powered angel into thinking that a painting class is more important than the people that died here?”

“Dean…” Sam sounded like he was trying to stay calm. “Did this happen in front of the employees or other guests?”

“Yeah…”

“He was playing the part. That’s a good thing. I ran out to the morgue this morning, but the Shoemakers were cremated, some religious thing. I’m going to keep looking.”

“Yeah, ok. I have a couple of people that I want you to take a look at. Rosa, the activities director, and Munny, the waiter. Something’s not adding up with either of them and I don’t know what.”

Sam huffed at me, if I didn’t know him better I’d probably think he was laughing at me. But that was one hundred percent pure Sam Winchester annoyance. “Anything else?”

“Just do your damn job,” I said, hanging up before he could get another word in.

Something still wasn’t sitting right. Sam didn’t think Cas’s behavior was a big deal. Add the staff’s behavior to that, and no one in this crazy place was acting the way they should have been. 

Was it some kind of djinn? Some mass illusion? Nah, the emotions you felt in those were real. Unless I was the only one caught by the djinn. I guess in that case, I’d just have to wait for Sam to come and rescue my ass, working my way through whatever this world held.

Something about the djinn theory just didn’t sit right. I’ve met a few kinds of djinn in my day, those that wanted to keep you hyped up on happy feelings so you wouldn’t try to find your way out of the dream world—definitely not the case here—and those that tried to scare you for the taste of the adrenaline in your blood. But I wasn’t scared. Not really. Confused, maybe a little angry. I kind of doubted there was anything out there who would get their high off those kind of emotions. 

Next logical guess: witches. I hoped it wasn’t fucking witches—spewing their bodily fluids everywhere—but what else could cause these mass fucking delusions? Maybe a curse? I’d seen ghosts take people over, but never this many people at once—not unless there were a shit-ton of ghosts to begin with. 

Sam had shared his research on the place, no ghost activity, nothing unusual before last week. Unless he was wrong. But here that painting lady was saying a whole bunch of people had seen this impossible yeti.

I cursed into the freezing cold, my breath fogging up the air in front of me. “Dean?” came a soft voice from behind me.

I turned around to see one of the women from the painting class. Shit. I put on my best smile. I don’t think it was fooling either of us. “Hey, Lisa, right?”

“Liza,” she corrected softly. She looked cold, her cheeks tinged with pink.

“Sorry. Liza. What can I do for you? Where’s your girlfriend?”

“Wife,” she whispered against the cold. “She’s with your fiancé. He’s really upset.”

“It’s not that I don’t appreciate the concern, lady, but I’m sure he’s fine. He’s a big boy.”

She shrugged, her heavy winter coat bobbing against her earrings. “Doesn’t mean he can’t still be hurt by someone he loves,” she said, looking at me pointedly.

For the love of god, could people just cool it with this damn love-y dove-y crap already! “Listen, this was a mistake, all right? It’s all just a stupid mistake! We weren’t even supposed to be here! And Cas doesn’t love me, okay? So I’m just going to get the hell out of here before I lose my goddamn mind!” I turned to walk away until I heard her quiet voice.

“Have you watched him lately?”

“What?” I looked back and stared at her; what was she getting at?

“He stares at you all the time. He can’t take his eyes off you.”

“That’s just Cas. It doesn’t mean anything.”

“He loves you, you _amoretz_.” For the first time since we started talking I didn’t have to strain to hear her. “And you love him too. Every person here can see that. Well, almost everyone. Maybe you should get your head out of your ass and pay attention sometime. Because if you let him go, you’ll regret it forever.”

“Damn. Don’t hold back then.” It was like being accosted by a ferret. Tiny as fuck, but one hell of a bite.

“I’m not the one that’s supposed to be good that this. Orinda is. That’s why she’s dealing with the emotional fallout in there and I’m out here with the immature douche who caused it.”

Maybe she was the douche. “Listen, _Liza_ , I—”

I was cut off when someone came running past us, crunching loudly through the snow. We watched the red jacket of a staff member turn the corner around the building. I hadn’t seen where exactly he had come from, but I was scanning the tree line, looking for whatever had spooked him. I drew my knife from my boot, trying to hide it from Liza with my body as I followed the employee’s footprints back into the snow. I could hear Liza following behind me. The girl was braver than I would have given her credit for. Or dumber. 

Footsteps to our right had me looking up, ready to attack. It was Shannon, heading our way. I ran out to meet him when he stopped, panting heavily with his hands on his knees for balance. “What is it? Where is it?” I asked, looking behind him for our monster.

“There’s been another murder,” he gasped out. “Out by the pond.” He and Liza started running that way as soon as he caught his breath. With one last glance to the tree line, I followed them. If there was something out there, it was probably gone now.

When I got to the pond, there was a woman lying face down in the snow. She was wearing the blood red jacket that marked her as hospitality staff at the resort. A little gem I’d picked up in Castiel’s required reading while I was waiting for him during breakfast. Her body was ripped open, and there was blood everywhere. A barricade of staff surrounded her, blocking our path. Something looked wrong, but every time I tried to get closer, someone would cut me off. Usually it was the “This is a crime scene” bullshit. I thought about going to the Impala and pulling my badge, but thanks to Sam I was there under my real name and all of official looking stuff had aliases. It wasn’t just me trying to look; half a dozen couples had all found their way here and were trying to get a closer look at the body in the snow. I couldn’t do anything with so many people there, so I figured I’d come back when things cleared up a little. Or maybe Sam could get through the line. He must have still be in town from visiting the morgue, or he would have been here as soon as the commotion started.

I knew Cas was there. I saw him, standing off to the side, but he wasn’t looking at me. I was headed toward him to compare notes when one of the employees I hadn’t met led a sobbing, shaking Di—the woman from check-in—through the crowd. “It was horrible,” she moaned, her voice loud and carrying through the group, stopping everyone into silence. “Something white came out of the woods over there! It just…it just cut right through her with its giant claws and ran that way!” They led her back into the building, like it was some kind of big production.

It took me a minute, but I pushed through the people to Cas. “I tried to get through the group of people around her, but no one’s getting through that right now.”

“I’m not surprised.” He still wasn’t looking at me, instead watching the direction Di had disappeared to with a curious tilt to his head.

“What do you say we go check out where our monster disappeared while everyone’s busy over here?”

That made him turn to me. “You’re not mad at me anymore?” His blue eyes were wide and open, sad and hopeful at the same time. 

Fuck. I sighed. “I’m just trying to work the case, Cas. I was never trying to—” I stopped myself before I could finish that thought. The last thing I wanted was for him to know I was feeling shit for him. Again. 

I gave him the easy part of the truth. “This place, it’s just getting to me. There’s so much we could be doing, and we’re just sitting on our asses watching paint dry. Literally. That’s not me. You gotta’ know that by now. Not when people are in danger. Hell, not ever.”

The angel considered for a minute. “Of course, Dean. Let’s go see what’s over in the tree line.”

As soon as we were covered by the trees I pulled out my gun, just in case. Yeah, whatever it was Cas could probably take it, but that didn’t mean I was going to go in defenseless. We didn’t have to walk far before we came across some white hairs. They weren’t just in one spot, it was like the hairs were littering the tree line. I wanted to get as big a sample as possible to send to Sam and look at myself, but Cas stopped me. “This should be all we need. If we’re dealing with something animalistic I’d rather keep some sense of surprise by not getting both of our scents outside the guest areas.”

“I can take care of myself, Cas. How far could this thing have gotten?”

He scanned the tree line. “Far. I couldn’t find any trace of anything unnatural last night. I can’t find anything now. It’s either very fast or very well warded.” He stared off in the distance before turning back to me. “We should shower. I’ve been painting and you should probably wash off before we eat. I assume you still want to investigate as a guest, they’re planning a picnic for us next.”

I rolled my eyes. “Yeah, I guess that’s the way we have to do this one. Never again, though, Cas.”

I couldn’t tell for sure, but I thought he looked a little disappointed.

o0o

Cas let me take the first shower. It wasn’t exactly relaxing, knowing I’d have to go right back out in the cold, and that we were no closer to solving the case. Well, that wasn’t exactly true. We had the hair, which looked more like thread than hair when I looked at it close up.

“Any ideas?” I asked him when I came out of the bathroom. He looked up at me from his place on the table, and his breath hitched for a second. He must have been so focused on that hair that he didn’t hear me finish in the bathroom.

He cleared his throat, apparently he knew I’d caught him. “It’s natural, but I don’t believe it’s animal. Cotton, or maybe linen. Maybe we should have gotten a bigger sample. Whatever it is, it’s something the monster is wearing.”

I took it from him, studying it. While I was looking at it, Cas got up and went into the bathroom, closing the door behind him. Which was fucking weird. He doesn’t have to use the bathroom. Hell, he doesn’t even have to use the shower if he doesn’t want to. But maybe some things just stay with you once you start doing them.

I tried calling Sammy again, because I figured the whole staff had to be in a ruckus with one of their own dying. “Hey, Dean. Find anything?”

“Got some kind of fiber. Don’t know how it’s related yet. And the angel apparently just decided that cleanliness is next to godliness.”

Sam laughed. “Wow, great job. Are you guys having fun?”

What the fuck? “Yeah. You know, between mandatory art class and the monster killing another victim, it’s been a fucking riot.”

I could practically hear him backpedaling. “Sorry. Shit, I didn’t mean that. I just figured it would be a nice break for you guys...to be at a nice place like that. I know you’re working. But, you know, try to enjoy yourself anyway.” 

Now I’ve got nothing against having a little fun, if I had, I’d have called him out on his little girlfriend last night. And I had nothing against a drink or two on the job. Maybe if we wrapped this up quick and didn’t have anything else to run to, we might as well ride out the weekend. The brownies alone would be worth it. But this attitude was not going to fly. 

I was about to give him a piece of my mind when someone knocked at the door. “I’ll call you back. Keep looking. Call if you get into trouble.”

It was that Money guy again, wearing a heavy red coat and carrying a picnic basket. A picnic basket? In the winter? That was the stupidest shit I’d ever heard of. “I guess you should come in. It looks like we’re not ready yet.”

He thanked me and came in, hesitating at the door like he was trying to decide whether he should take off his shoes or something. “Your Castiel is a very handsome man. It must take him some time to get ready to go out.”

Wait…last night’s little flirting gig wasn’t enough? The guy was still after my fiancé? Well, my pretend fiancé, anyway. Should I be pretend jealous? Before I could figure out what I was supposed to do with that, Cas came out, dressed in a pair of my jeans, which makes sense, since they’d hold off the cold better than his dress pants, and one of my henleys. The close fit made his shoulders look even broader. The jeans were tight against his calves. It was…a hell of a look. Just standing there with that messy wet hair, and for a moment all I could think of was the first time I’d ever seen him come out of a shower, after our long stint in purgatory.

“You look even more amazing than you did last night,” Munny said. What the hell, dude? He was flirting right out in the open. Did he not want to keep his freaking job? I grabbed Cas’s coat, standing behind him to help him put it on. I may have totally planted a possessive kiss on his cheek. My heart stuttered in my chest a little. I don’t know how to describe it. I’m not like, awesome at smelling shit or whatever, but Cas smelled nice. Warm. He was all stubborn and gruff which on him is actually kind of cute—when he’s not trying to smite my ass. 

After all, we were just pretending, and that’s what a guy like me would do if I was dating a guy like Cas and some smarmy hotel employee tried to charm my fiancé out from under my nose.

Cas got even stiffer, his eyes wide in shock, but otherwise didn’t react to the kiss. He didn’t help me get my coat on. He just walked out the door. Fuck. He must have hated me for pulling that. But he had to know that was probably going to come up at least once this weekend. I was probably going to get an earful as soon as that guy left. At least Cas wasn’t flirting with him.

Munny wouldn’t let Cas or I take the basket, although we both offered. He led us out past the main lodge house and into the forest. “Aren’t you afraid of being attacked?” I asked him.

He looked at me, his face open and surprised. “By what?”

What the hell? Was not one person this whole damn weekend going to make the slightest bit of sense? “Uh, I dunno. By whatever killed those people last week. By what killed your co-worker like an hour ago?”

The look he gave me was freaking weird. I don’t even know how to explain it. Like he was confused, then hurt, then a little worried. Then he just laughed. “I think we’ll be okay. You can take care of us, can’t you Castiel? So strong.”

Cas flashed the twerp a goddamn smile. “I assure you both, if anything were to attack us on our outing, I would be perfectly well equipped to handle it.” The other dude giggled. Fucking giggled. 

My stomach turned over. It wasn’t jealousy. I was just hungry. It had been a while since breakfast. I must have been starving. I hoped we’d get to that picnic area soon.

“Parts of the Carnelian Sunset have been on this location since 1937,” Munny said “The main lodge was originally built as a private summer home.”

“Really? Whose home?” Cas asked. “Anyone we might have heard of?” Munny was more than happy to have Castiel’s undivided attention. It was a fair question, too. Or it would have been if we were dealing with a ghost.

“Oh, uhm… I don’t honestly know. That wasn’t in the information I’m supposed to supply on the tour.”

How this guy got to keep his job, flirting with the guests in front of their loved ones and not knowing his own fucking business, I had no idea. Hell, he was supposed to be giving the historic tour, and he didn’t know the history! I’d have to add that to the list of things for Sammy to look up the next time I talked to him.

“The Lake Tahoe area has a very rich history” he said in his smarmy accent. “The Native American Washoe tribe once held all of this land, but as early as the 1800s it had become a source of timber for the gold rush.”

“Technically, it was silver,” Castiel said. “There’s no gold around here, but there’s plenty of silver not far off.” How the hell did he know that? He could probably smell it. Angels.

Munny stuttered. “Really? That seems… well, never mind. We’re on the California side of the lake, so gold rush.” Cas nodded, but I could see the frown lines between his eyes. Me too, buddy. “The current owner purchased the land to start a hotel fifteen years ago, but we’ve only been in business for about six months.”

“Who even has that kind of money?” I asked.

“The owner, presumably,” Cas answered calmly.

“The desk clerk from Kermit, Texas? I call bullshit.” Nothing was adding up on this stupid-ass trip and I was about ready to call the whole thing a wash and get the hell out of Dodge.

Munny started stuttering. “I, well… I don’t… who? Anyway, the uh… the gold rush. Yeah. We were up to the gold rush.” He started walking more quickly. “And the owner had this property for several years… yeah. Many of the current employees have been here for a decade or more helping to prepare the Carnelian Sunset for guests.”

So…since they were twelve? 

“Most of them have been happy to see their labors come to fruition, although there are a few who I believe miss the peace from before the guests started to arrive.”

“Like whom?” Cas asked, genuinely interested. The asshole employee smiled gratefully back at him. Sure. I’m a pain in the ass, but damn. That doesn’t mean he had to jump on Cas like some kind of savior every time he opened his mouth.

“Oh, well, let’s see. You met Rosa. She’s sweet enough but she’d rather be spending her time painting the beauty of the lake than teaching others to paint abstract portraits that mostly come out the same.”

Alright. I suppose we could stick another one in the Rosa column if she’s pissed that people are taking up her precious quiet time. Between that, keeping the dead couple’s painting as a souvenir and being completely relaxed about their death, it kept her in the running, but my money was still on the slimy waiter. Maybe I could get him to touch the silverware before he left us? Nah, no telling if this shit was real silver.

“The Magro sisters, Marciana and Matilde, seemed pretty happy when they were first hired, but have gotten closed off since we opened. Haven’t spoken to anyone much.”

“The Magro sisters?” Cas asked.

“They are our contracted masseuses, if you haven’t met them yet, I’m sure you will later.”

“Of course,” Cas said.

“And everyone’s been acting strange since the rumors started.”

“Rumors?” I asked.

“Yes! There has been talk of a large white beast that appears and disappears! Some call it the yeti, others the sasquatch, someone even called it Rakshasa!”

“Wait, whoa. Back it up. Rakshasa? Like the shape shifter that can become invisible and eats people?”

Munny stared at me. “Shape shifter? I thought it was another name for yeti?”

Well, fuck. I supposed that widened the suspect pool. And the monster pool.

“Hey Munny,” I said, “what can you tell us about this girl that died this morning? She have any enemies?”

“Oh, Leila? She was sweet. She liked to talk, but I can’t think of anyone who would want to hurt her.”

I looked at Cas. Liking to talk was a good enough reason if someone thought she’d seen something she shouldn’t have. “What did she do?”

The tour guide, such as he was, looked at me funny. “She died.”

What the hell? Even Cas looked at me with his eyebrows raised. “Yeah, I mean her job. At the hotel.”

“Oh. Wait. I’m supposed to know this. I don’t usually get asked. Uhm…she worked in housekeeping. I think. Don’t quote me on that. It’s not important.” It’s not important? I don’t think I’ve ever met a bigger asshole. More and more I was thinking we had our guy. I was trying to catch Cas’s eye, but he was following this Munny guy, his lips pursed in concentration and his focus straight ahead. 

“And oh, look!” the waiter went on in a rush. “Here we are at the Carnelian Pond! The whole resort was named for the pond because in the spring and summer there is so much algae in the water, it turns a reddish orange.”

There was a small picnic table overlooking the lake. I’m sure it was cute and all, but I couldn’t figure out how two full grown men were supposed to fit their legs under there. “The seats are heated, so they won’t be too cold, and the picnic has been packed to the specifications that were left during your registration.”

I looked at the guy. “We didn’t specify anything.”

“Oh that’s right! Your brother ordered today’s lunch for you.” With that he set the basket on the table. “Have fun.” He turned and walked away, then turned back, beckoning Cas to come follow him. 

He did. I couldn’t believe the angel would just follow the dumb employee when he was supposed to be pretending to love me. They were close enough that I could still see them, but I couldn’t make out what they were really saying. Cas rubbed a hand on the other man’s shoulder. God damn it, Cas. We were working! It was not the time to be picking up a date, especially a creepy one. The whole point was that we were supposed to be dating as far as anyone here knew. Hell, we were supposed to be engaged. 

Maybe I was reading this all wrong. Maybe Cas was just as suspicious as I was and was trying to draw the guy into a false sense of security or something. He was a tactical guy, that made sense. 

And I wasn’t doing him any good standing here staring, I had to make it look good. I’d just have to wait for him like this was normal. Like I trusted him. 

I did trust him, damn it.

No way was I getting my legs on that tiny ass bench, so I climbed up on the table facing away from them, over the still, frozen water of the lake. At least it wasn’t snowing.

When I opened the basket, there was a burst of steam. Hell, this wasn’t a picnic. This thing was insulated. Damn. There were two cheeseburgers wrapped in waxed paper, still warm, and not even soggy, some fries, which were kind of soggy and sad, and oh hell yes! For dessert, four of their awesome brownies. I broke a piece off and ate it, looking out over the water. It’s not like one brownie would hurt anything. 

It was pretty quiet out here. I guess I could see why people would like it. A little sad and lonely. Or maybe that was just the murders talking.

“Did you save any brownies for me?” The voice was right behind me. Fuck that man needed a bell.

“Of course, I only had a bite.” I looked down into the basket. There was only one brownie left. Shit. Well, what Cas didn’t know wouldn’t hurt him. “So what did he want?” I asked, looking out over the lake. If he was more worried about food he couldn’t even taste than talking about the case I didn’t owe him anything.

“He seemed worried that we would be giving him a poor review. I assured him that everything was fine.”

I stopped myself before scoffing. “So he did realize what a flirtatious asshole he was being, with me standing right here?” I grabbed one of the soggy fries out of the basket. It wasn’t terrible. 

The table shifted as Cas sat on the other side of the basket. “Flirting?”

I rolled my eyes, looking at him. “Well yeah. He thinks you’re hot.”

“That’s ridiculous, Dean. I’m here with you.” The words shouldn’t have warmed me as much as they did.

“Well, I’m not sure your buddy Munny got the message. Maybe you need to show it a little more.” I took a big bite of the burger. Well, I’d just said that. Shit.

“How?” God, those earnest fucking blue eyes. 

“Uh…well…” I felt a chill, but I honestly wasn’t sure it had anything to do with the weather. I looked up at him and took a deep breath. It was just Cas, the guy who’d been a part of my life since before the first apocalypse. There was something comforting in those same blue eyes, it was easy to see how I’d gotten so swept up in them before. “When people are together, like, a romance” the word felt thick in my throat, but it came out just the same, “they do little things for each other.”

His eyes never left mine, but I could see his hand moving, until he raised the last brownie up to my face. “No way, buddy,” I protested. “I left that one for you.” The words were quieter than I had meant them to come out. Maybe it was the stillness of the lake. 

“And you like them,” he whispered, breaking off a piece and pushing it into my mouth. 

I honestly don’t know why I let him, but at the time, it felt right. I could taste the amazing chocolate and the salt on his skin, since the asshole didn’t have to wear gloves out in the cold like I did. It was like a spark went through my body, like I was feeling his grace for the first time in years. But that couldn’t be. Cas would have reacted, too.

“Thanks,” I said. I had to look down at the wooden bench beneath my feet just for something to do. That was…shit, that was amazing. I’d never felt a spark quite like that before with anyone. It didn’t feel like any of those times I’d hooked up with someone for a night or two. Hell, it didn’t even feel like it had with Lisa, or with Cassie. I mean, maybe the adrenaline or something was the same but… this was on a whole different level.

My heart ached with the sudden realization that there was no way I would get to keep this. Today. Tomorrow. Monday morning. There was an expiration date, and it was coming up fast. Hell, it would be even faster if we ganked whatever the hell was killing people up here.

“What else do people who are in love do?” Cas asked me softly.

“They uh…” I looked up, “they stare at each other. Especially when they think the other one isn’t watching.” I had Sam’s observations to thank for that one.

Cas chuckled. The deep sound was warm and almost inviting, like a rich blanket. I could wrap myself up in a laugh like that. “I don’t think that’s something you and I will have a problem with.” I grinned back, I felt like I was on a fucking cloud. 

“And,” I said, my heart pounding like I was back on my first solo hunt, “they find excuses to touch one another, small ways.” I laced my fingers in between his. It was strange, holding a guy’s hand like that. It wasn’t that I’d never kissed a guy, but this was so much more; it was intimate, or some corny word like that. I knew I was blushing, but I just didn’t care. His fingers were long, slender, and smooth, not callused from years of work like mine. I almost laughed. They stayed soft, but they could do so much. Hell, he could kill with those hands, and not even break a sweat. He’d healed with those hands, held with those hands, stitched my soul back together from the depths of hell with those hands. 

Here, right in front of me, was this awe-inspiring, colossal being, and he chose to be friends with me, to help me, because I tried to do what was right. It was too much to take in. I felt my chest getting tight. It was hard to breathe in the cold air. 

His other hand reached up and gently brushed my jaw, turning me to face him. Just like so many times before, I felt healed. I relaxed into his touch. “And do they kiss?” he whispered. I nodded, watching in hushed surprise as he leaned in, his body warmer than it had any right to be, hovering millimeters from my face. And then our lips touched. 

The spell broke. What the fuck? This wasn’t some lame ass fairy tale. This was real life, and we had shit to do. Hunters don’t get god damned happy endings, and there’s no way I was going to waste any more time fantasizing about something I was never going to get. I stood up, and walked away from the table as fast as I could without looking like I was running away.

I heard Cas packing up the basket behind me, and before I knew it he had caught up. “No!” I said turning to him. “Stay here. Or see what you can find out about the land or something. I need– shit, Cas. I just need some space.”

For half a second, he looked hurt, but he snapped out of it quickly. “Of course, Dean.”

Thank god. Maybe we both just needed to focus on the case at hand.


	3. Chapter 3

I honestly couldn’t remember much about the walk back to the cabin. I think it might have been snowing again.

It was no big deal. We kissed. It didn’t mean anything. People kiss all the time. We were just, you know, getting into character for the case. It didn’t mean _anything._

God, poor Cas. The only person who had kissed him, like really kissed him, had been that bitchy reaper who had tried to kill him. And then me, and I didn’t even mean it. Not really. What kind of an asshole does that to their best friend? We could have easily pretended to be a couple without ever having to actually _kiss_. There weren’t even any other guests around to pretend for!

I managed to unlock the cabin and push my way in before I heaved up what little lunch I had eaten. 

Cas had been on Earth for years, but he still had a lot to learn about people. And me, I was the guy who was supposed to explain it all to him. But what did I do? I failed him, again and again, that’s what. What a fucking asshole.

I don’t know how long I sat there, legs curled up under me, arm resting on the open toilet seat. Someone knocked, and I turned my head just enough to see Cas standing against the door frame. “Are you sick, Dean?”

My heart ripped in two for the way I’d treated him again. I got to my feet, a little shaky. “It’s nothing you can fix, man. But thanks.” I flushed the toilet and washed my hands and face in the sink. I couldn’t shake the feeling of Cas watching me the whole time. 

Shit. I really owed it to the guy to say something. To try and salvage the friendship.

“Listen,” I said, turning to face him. I wiped my hands on my coat, only to realize that it was still wet from the snow. I gave up. “I’m so sorry about what happened out there. You gotta know, you’re my best friend, and I didn’t mean to fuck with your head.”

“You…were playing with my head?” he asked.

“No! I mean, well yeah, but not on purpose. The case just got to me, and all this couple’s crap, and that’s not what I want, you know?”

He took a step back and looked at me, confused. “You didn’t mean to kiss me.”

“Well,” I said gently, “technically you kissed me, but I didn’t mean to make you think it was alright. At least, not if we didn’t have to prove it to someone for our cover to work.”

“It wasn’t alright. We crossed boundaries.”

“Exactly,” I said, finally feeling a little relieved.

“I’ll meet you for dinner,” he said, brusquely. “Please let me know if I’m approaching any of your boundaries again.” And then he was just gone. 

He hadn’t flown off like that for ages. Well, he’d gone on patrol the night before, but at least he left the room before disappearing so it didn’t feel so damn creepy.

It always felt awkward and unfinished when he just left like that. This time, it felt heartbreaking. I sat on the edge of the tub with my head in my hands and tried to convince myself that I was doing the right thing. Cas believed I was the righteous man. I had to do the right thing for him, and let him be. The last thing he needed was to be stuck with me for the rest of my life.

I laid down in the bed. I had a few hours until dinner. I guess it was kind of ironic that this was the time the resort had scheduled for me to be in bed anyway.

o0o

I woke up groggy and not well rested. I didn’t have the first clue what had happened to our stupid fucking itinerary, but it wasn’t on the table. Like hell I was getting all dressed up again, though. I pulled on something clean and warm, and drier than what I’d been laying in, and headed over to the lodge, figuring they’d point me in the right direction.

Lucky for me, they were using the big gathering hall in the lodge. Thank god dinner was a more casual affair the second time. They had a big buffet-style table taking up one wall of the room, with honest to god people in chef’s outfits doling out choice cuts of roast beef or braised chicken.

Cas was nowhere to be seen, but I was going to try to wait for him. He said he’d meet me at dinner, and things between us were still kind of rocky—waiting was the least I could do. Someone came in with one of those big silver plates and when she uncovered it the smell of something covered in fried bacon filled the room. 

There was no way I wasn’t getting some of that before it was gone, so I went and loaded up my plate. I was definitely eying the almost empty tray of brownies, but one of the chef people replaced the tray, winked at me, and said “There’s more where these came from.” Oh, hell yes. I was never much of a stress eater, but the way things were going with these brownies, well, I could understand the appeal..

I wandered over to Shannon. He seemed to be chill enough to have a conversation with and I was afraid to raise the wrath of the Regenbogens again. “Hey, have you seen the Luong’s anywhere?” I asked.

Shannon looked down at me from where he was standing. It was a little weird to have someone look down at me that wasn’t Sammy. Shannon was fucking huge. “Oh, they’ve got their picnic tonight. So I guess they miss out on the buffet.”

“Huh, that’s too bad.” It was so hard to make small talk all of a sudden. Shit, I didn’t know anything about these people, and nothing seemed like it was getting us any closer to solving this case. At least not on my end. Hopefully Sam would come up with something, but the other guests didn’t know shit.

“Where’s your handsome young man?” Ah. Well. That was the kicker, wasn’t it? 

“I…he said he’d meet me here.” A big black arm wrapped around my shoulder.

“Hey. Hey, look at me, man. It’s going to be okay.” His eyes were so dark and wide and earnest. He didn’t even know what the hell I was going through, and he wanted to comfort me. I can’t imagine what he thought was going on. Maybe that Cas left me or something. “Sam and I, now we’ve gone through plenty of rough spots. And we’re still together. It’s not always sunshine and rainbows.” He laughed to himself, something big and loud. “Well, it’s always rainbows. But that’s not the point. The thing is, not everything goes right. Not even on vacation. But you work it out.”

I was glad when his arm was off me a second later. God knows what he wanted me to say to that. He spun me around to face the wide doorway where Cas had suddenly appeared. “There’s your boy. Now, I say why don’t you go on over there, help him pick out a nice plate of his favorites, and have a quiet chat about whatever you two need to work out.”

He patted me on the back. I probably nodded at him, but honestly, I was just focused on Cas. He was practically radiating angelic fury. Had he finally caught a break on the case? I crossed the room as quickly as I could, laden down with my plate, and hesitated. Fuck, I was stronger than this. I reached out to grip his arm. “Hey.” 

He just stared at me. His bitch face could have given Sam’s a run for its money. My arm dropped to my side.

“Should we leave? Did you figure it out?”

“Unfortunately, no. I’ve found nothing new on the case.” He walked away from me, headed toward the tables of food that I knew for a fact he didn’t need to eat. Hell, if it all tasted like freaking molecules anyway, it’s not like he could even enjoy it.

I wasn’t sure what had crawled up his ass, but we were just going to have to get through the next couple of days. I found an empty table and sat down. He could join me, or not. It didn’t matter where he sat. Hell, all of this was bullshit anyway. It’s not like I’d never worked a case on my own. I could do this. 

I felt more than saw someone slide into the seat next to me, and my shoulders sagged in relief. We’d worked through tougher shit before, after all. 

“So, Winchester—” that was not Cas’s voice. I looked up to see one of the Regenbogens sitting at my table. Orinda, I think her name was. “Care to tell me why my new friend is all by himself looking like someone stomped all over his heart?”

Who the hell did she think she was? We’d met once for about thirty minutes, and most of that was spent mixing paint and talking with our partners. Secondly, “Look, I’m not heartbroken or whatever you’re projecting on me, it’s just been a busy day. I’m kind of beat.”

“Well, have a damn cookie, but I’m talking about Castiel.” 

Wait, what? 

“What happened between you two?” she asked. “Before the painting class this morning he couldn’t stop singing your praises. He thought you were the most amazing human to have ever walked the earth. Then you came to join us in there with your gruff, hard-as-nails attitude and he’s been deflated ever since. He seems like a great guy.”

“He is,” I said warily.

“But?” she pressed.

I scoffed. What the hell kind of nerve did this woman have, anyway? “But nothing. You and your wife have been up my ass about Cas since we met. I think it’s you two that have the problem. Not me and Cas. So are you looking for a third for a threesome, or just some poor sad sap who’s an easy mark for your scams?”

Orinda’s arms went up in protest. “Easy with the claws there, tiger. You’re the wrong kind of kitty for me.” I smirked, and she looked at me seriously. “I’ve only just met him, but I think Cas is great. You clearly think he’s great. So let me ask you a question: Have you told him that lately?”

“Told him what?”

“Don’t be an ass, Dean. I know you’re smarter than that. Have you told him how you feel about him?” 

I hadn’t. Not in so many words. I looked down at my plate. “Son of a bitch.”

“It’s not my place to say, but he deserves better.”

I pushed the food away. I did _not_ want to have this conversation. But if I didn’t do it now, who would I have it with? Sammy? Fuck that. 

“That’s the whole thing, isn’t it?,” I said, pissed at myself. “You’ve only just met us and even you know he’s way too good for me. And you don’t know the half of it. He’s a fucking angel for god’s sake. When we met, I was nothing but a drop-out with ten bucks to my name.”

“Oh,” she gasped quietly. “Oh. Did you two fight about that?”

“No. Shit, I don’t know.” I ran my hands through my hair in frustration. This is not the way things were supposed to go. 

“Apologize. Talk to him. You know, Castiel doesn’t think you’re worthless. He thinks you hung the moon. And if he’s half as good as you seem to think he is, I’d say his opinions are worth something.”

She got up and walked away, her dark hair swinging with every step.

No one else came to talk to me, not during the whole hour. I could have totally gone and made conversation with someone. Hell, I’m Dean Winchester, that’s what I do.

But I had things to think about.

I waited outside when everyone left, hoping to catch up with Cas, but he brushed right past me toward the cabin. I realized that I didn’t even know where to start. Usually when I got like this, Sam could point me in the right direction. 

I pulled out my phone to call him, but paused. I really didn’t want to explain this shit to him. If I told him I’d accidentally kissed Cas, I’d never live it down. If I told him I actually liked it...that I wanted to maybe do it again… Hell no, that was something I’d never be able to do.

It wasn’t like Sam needed to know anyway. I’d already ruined everything. I slammed the phone back into my pocket without dialing and stomped off toward the cabin. 

The lights were off when I unlocked the door. The sun was barely shining; but the angel probably didn’t need light to see. There was a lump in the bed, curled up under the blankets. When I turned on the bathroom light, I could see it was Cas, his head faced toward the closet door, his chest rising and falling with the breathing that had become habit for him. He didn’t turn or speak. I didn’t know what to say anyway.

I brushed my teeth and came out into the main room, checking out the love seat. I could probably fit there, if I crunched up. Wouldn’t be the best on my back. I could sleep on the floor. I could even pull one of the pillows off the bed. Hell, I’d slept in worse places than that. I grabbed the pillow Cas wasn’t using and threw it on the floor.

“Just come to bed, you assbutt,” Cas grunted. He didn’t turn around or roll over. I waited for him to say more, but he didn’t. 

I picked up the pillow. This was probably a stupid idea. But fuck, that bed had been comfortable. I climbed into bed behind him, turning to face the wall. Whatever was going on, we still had tomorrow to work it out, right?


	4. Chapter 4

For the first time in a long time, I woke up to a warm body next to mine. I had an arm slung over her hip, and when I pulled back she leaned into me, stretching. Without opening my eyes, I breathed in her scent. It was clean and kind of awesome, not fake and full of perfume. “Good morning, Dean.”

Oh yeah. Not a woman. Cas. That explained why I felt safer than I had since I don’t know when. I may have gotten a little closer during the night. He was warm, and the air was cold. I could totally get used to this.

“Morning, Cas.”

“Will you please move your arm? You rolled over in the middle of the night, and I didn’t want to disturb you, but I’ve been stuck in this position for hours.” Shit. Cas sounded, not pissed, but stressed maybe. I’d barely moved my arm when he was up, striding across the room toward the breakfast tray next to the door, his shoulders tense under his wrinkled button down shirt. I stretched and headed to answer nature’s call.

By the time I made it out of the bathroom, Cas already had my breakfast on the table. I’d be lying if I said I didn’t like the idea of waking up to that again. But I knew that wasn’t my choice. That had to be Cas’s choice. And the only way that would happen, was if I opened my mouth. 

But the waffles were fucking awesome and I really didn’t want to stop eating them. Or the maple pepper bacon that had come with them.

Fuck this.

“Look,” I said, pushing my plate away. Cas looked up suddenly from the new day’s paperwork that had come with breakfast. Meeting his eye I almost didn’t want to continue. “I’m sorry. About yesterday. About last night. I don’t want to fight.”

“I apologize as well. This situation has been more emotionally confusing than I had expected. I may have overreacted.” 

I grinned. Sure he had, but I had too. “It’s all good, Cas. We’re square.”

He reached out to grab my hand across the table, and I felt my breath catch in my chest. “I’m glad. I believe we can do this, for as long as we need to. I know solving this case is important to you and to Sam, and if being your fiancé for another day or two is key to that, I can be whatever you need of me.”

The words cut like a fucking knife. I had finally realized that I didn’t just want a day or two. He was already everything I needed him to be. 

I’ve never met a hunter yet who got a happy ending. Bat-shit crazy, suicide by stupidity, or out in a blaze of glory, those were the only choices open to me, and I knew which one I was hoping for. But I was going to be damned, again, if I didn’t take this opportunity for all it was worth.

I smiled back at Cas. I wasn’t trying to flirt, hell, I wasn’t even trying to be romantic. I just smiled and clapped my other hand on top of his. “Thanks, Cas. That means a lot.” I gave his hand one last squeeze before taking my hands back to finish my breakfast. “So what’s on the agenda today?” Wow. Way to chicken out, Winchester.

“It looks like after breakfast we will be treated to a couple’s massage.” I nearly choked. Okay. Massage. That wasn’t too sexy. “Then an early lunch with the rest of the couples, and then it just says ‘Winter Games’ with several exclamation marks.”

“Winter games?” My mouth may have been full. Whatever, Cas was used to me. “What the hell is that supposed to be?”

Cas flipped the paper to the other side, but it was blank. “I don’t know. Perhaps they explained it to the other couples during orientation.”

Huh. “Alright. Well, Winter games.” I took a big gulp of orange juice. I guess we’d find out.

o0o

Fine, I’ll admit it. Sometimes, massages can be nice. I’ve had my share of sexy massages from partners, before and after sex, and while they were usually not as, uh, relaxing as advertised, they were still pretty awesome. And it would be a lie to say I wasn’t more than a little intrigued by the idea of having, or giving, that kind of sexy massage with Cas. It would be in the name of saving lives, after all, right?

That said, the idea of getting naked in a room with him and two other people was weird as fuck.

Perky Miss Di met us at the front desk when we walked into the warm air of the lodge. Instead of pointing me to the left like yesterday morning, she pointed us to the right, toward the dining hall/banquet room area. At least that was a good thing. Yesterday was not exactly a day I wanted to have a repeat of.

Two women met us at the dining hall entrance. “You must be Misters Novak and Winchester,” said the taller one. “I’m Matilde Magro, and this is my sister Marciana.” 

“Hey,” I said, already feeling the awkwardness of the situation. 

They didn’t look much like sisters to me, but hell, the number of people who were surprised that Sam and I were brothers was enough for me not to question them. 

The two women led us through the almost empty dining hall to a door that I hadn’t noticed off the back of it. Inside were two of those weird massage tables with the holes cut out for your head. The shorter one, Marciana, locked the door. “You two go ahead and get undressed and lay on the tables. Don’t get too far ahead of yourselves, because we’ll be back in three minutes, and if you’re not under the towels, well, we can’t be held accountable.” She looked over Cas’s body appreciatively and I bristled. What the fuck? Wasn’t the whole point that masseuses were supposed to be fucking professionals?

They ducked behind another door, and my eyes wandered over to where Cas stood, undressing. Hell, the number of times I’d seen him out of that damn trench coat I could probably count on one hand. And here he was, unbuttoning his shirt, sliding it off…

It was off his shoulders before I even remembered that I was supposed to be undressing too. It was hard not to sneak glances at Cas. I mean, I could have played it off as a million different things: research—in case anyone asked what he was like in bed—or to fool the Magro sisters when they came back in the room. But making excuses felt like an asshole thing to do.

Taking off my shirt was no big deal. The pants, well, they were a little harder. I finally decided fuck it. It wasn’t like Cas was even going to be looking at me. Off came the pants, my boxers sliding down in the same motion. I turned to climb up on the table and came face to face with Cas. He was staring at me, his mouth open comically. I swallowed hard against the sudden lump of nerves in my throat. “See anything you like, angel?” It came out as more of a croak than I was hoping for.

He was standing naked in all his glory, the Enochian protection tattoo dark against the soft line of the ribs under his skin. And holy shit, he was half hard. I mean, I knew it was possible, but I never thought—not in five lifetimes, not with everything he knew about me. 

“Dean, I—” He moved closer to me. My hand raised all by itself to touch his skin and—

A knock sounded from the door and we both jumped, diving face first onto the massage tables. Of course that meant I was laying on top of the towel that was supposed to cover my ass. I ripped it out from under me, it took a few awkward tugs, and got myself mostly covered. By the time I looked up, both the women were in the room. Son of a bitch!

“Aww, Marci, it looks like we have a couple of real love birds on our hands.” I could hear her coming closer to me. 

“That’s so sweet. No worries, boys. We’ll make sure we get you nice and relaxed before we roll you over to do your front.”

“Wouldn’t want to embarrass anyone.” They tittered away like it was some kind of hilarious joke.

“No, we wouldn’t want that, would we?” I muttered.

I caught a glance of one of them, maybe Matilda? Matilde? Whatever. She rolled her eyes and frowned, which I’m pretty sure is not appropriate fucking behavior. “Oh!” she said. “I almost forgot to remove my rings.”

The other one giggled, high pitched and fake as hell. “Oh! Me too!” Whichever one was near me rolled a little table almost right under the hole for my face and started putting tons of gaudy ass gold jewelry on it. Okay. Good way to get your shit stolen, lady.

They started describing what was about to happen to us. Honestly, between the new age hippie music playing softly in the background and the warm oil she was drizzling on my back, I think I might have lost a couple of minutes. 

I wasn’t thinking about the woman behind me anyway. I’d like to be able to say I was thinking about the case. That wasn’t happening though. Not when Cas was two feet away from me, naked. Not when I could have sworn he was about to reach for me, too. 

The hum of the women chattering softly over us didn’t register at all. Maybe it should have. Hell, we hadn’t heard anything that helped with the case yet, and maybe these two would have that missing bit of information that would finally set us on the right track. But honestly, they could have dropped the the yeti’s corpse on the table in front of me and I wouldn’t have noticed. I was wrapped in fluffy white towels, and there was a chance Cas might actually not be playing some stupid game. He might want me. 

I knew angels could want, hell I’d met Balthazar. And so maybe it wasn’t love. But holy shit, Cas might want me to touch him. He might want to touch me back.

Honestly, I couldn’t wait for these two to get the hell out of here with their crappy taste in music.

There might have been a tiny thought in the back of my mind that was hoping Cas was paying more attention than I was to the sisters conversation. Finally, fucking finally, the women slowed to a stop. They made a big show of counting all their rings to make sure none were stolen. Which seemed pretty fucking stupid to me. We were the only ones in there, and it’s not like Cas and I had a place to hide anything. “We’ll just see ourselves out the backdoor, boys, you take your time in here.”

“Lunch is in a half hour, right out that door,” said the other one.

“Don’t do anything I wouldn’t do,” the taller sister said with a wink. Damned if I could keep them straight.

“Mattie!” scolded the other. “Try not to leave too big a mess, boys. You may be our last customers for the weekend, but we’d rather not spend all week cleaning in here.”

And then they were gone, the door behind them locking once again.

The complete silence, after an hour, maybe more, of that awful music, was deafening. For a good minute it was like I was having this weird out of body experience, all boneless on the table in the quiet. Then I heard the sound of Cas moving on the table and realized I was going to have to get up. 

Shit, getting up with Cas right there was going to be awkward. Even pushing up into a sitting position felt weird. I wasn’t sure what those sisters did but my arms were mush. Probably a good thing if it’s your vacation. Definitely a good thing if you’re in the middle of getting smacked around by someone wearing a Zorro mask. Not a damned good thing if you are in the middle of an investigation and people are dying.

I felt lightheaded when I finally stood up. I went to rub my eyes to clear them before I realized my hands were covered in oil. Switching gears, I grabbed a spare soft white towel from the counter just in reach. The long fibers absorbed most of the oil from my fingers within a few seconds. But then, it’s not like they had spent a lot of time on hand massage. It was still clean enough that I used it to wipe my eyes. 

I pulled the towel away to discover Cas, standing in my personal space again. His hips were wrapped in a similar towel, but I could see the V of his hips straining against his tan skin. I was surprised to see freckles. Did he even know he had them? Did he know anything about his body? How often had he ever changed his clothes, looked at himself?

My eyes grazed up and over his chest, coming to rest on Cas’s blue eyes. They were blown, the pupils large and black, staring at me with a look I’d seen on my partners a hundred times. Every time it’s kind of a thrill, knowing that someone thinks I’m attractive, that I’m worth it. Seeing it in Cas’s eyes was a thousand times different. There are terrible things I’ve done, shit, I still don’t talk about them. I can’t. Not without ripping a hole in my god damned head. I mean, being a demon, that was the pretty part.

But Cas—fuck, man—he’s seen everything. He was there when I was at my worst, and he still thought I was worth saving. Was it possible, just maybe, that he thought I was worth something else too? Shit.

I slid off the table, my feet hitting the floor. We were so fucking close, and he was right there, it was hard to keep my balance, and then his hands were gripping me at the hips. What the fuck man? His hands were so fucking strong, and right away I knew he had me, I knew I was fucking safe. “Cas,” I whispered. “Is this real?” His hand came up, and I closed my eyes, anticipating the feel of it against my cheek—ready to smell the mingle of massage oil and skin from the pulse point at his wrist. He cradled my face and I turned my head into him.

He didn’t answer, just closed that last inch between the two of us. I saw wide blue eyes before my own fluttered closed, and then we were kissing.

[](https://imgbb.com/)

It was, hell, how do you even describe something like that? It was fucking scary as hell, like any second he’d realize what he was doing and break away, or start laughing at me like it was all a joke. It was like the first time I got high off some girl’s joint, and I was flying high and safe and happy, everything was bright colors and more real than ever, but nothing could fucking hurt me.

God damn it, I’m not good at words. It was a fucking kiss, and every nerve in my body lit up like a god damned firework, and that was before any part other than our lips had even touched.

I reached one arm around him, slowly, hoping it was okay. When he didn’t resist I pulled him closer, wrapping both arms around him, my hands sliding in the oil. His lips hit mine again, and I flicked my tongue into his mouth. God he tasted fucking amazing. His arms went around my back, lifting me up until I was sitting on the table again. Being pushed around was hotter than it had any right to be. “Fuck, Cas!” I groaned out.

He looked up, breathing heavily. “Is that what this is, Dean? Is that what you want? Or is this another mistake?”

“No mistake,” I breathed, pulling him closer between my legs. “I want this. Fuck me, Cas.” I closed my eyes, letting touch flood through my senses.

Instead of the kiss I was expecting, or his hands between my legs, I felt him touch me in the middle of my forehead. I opened my eyes to see Cas moving his hand from my head, two fingers still pointed. Son of a bitch, he only did that when he was working some of his god damned mojo. 

Sure enough, I looked around the room and the two of us were standing, not two inches apart in our cabin. I was still buck-ass naked, and he was holding his towel with his other hand. “What the hell did you do that for?” I asked, louder than I meant to.

Cas didn’t even blink. He frowned a little, and tilted his head to the side that way he does when he’s kind of confused. “Matilde and Marciana specifically asked us not to make a mess. I haven’t had much experience with ‘fucking’, but I do remember that while there are many positive feelings involved, there are also many human bodily fluids which can be…unpleasant.”

I shook my head, chuckling. Fuck. Maybe it was what he said, or how he said it, or maybe I was just so god damned fucking happy that we were even getting to give this a chance. I pulled him in close, enjoying the feel of his lips on mine.

“Cas,” I finally gasped out, pushing him away a little, “I want this, fuck yeah I want this, but we can’t do this if you’re not into it too.”

“Dean Winchester,” he said, in that serious way of his, “I have seen what you have been through, and your soul is still the brightest thing on this planet.” Christ, my fingernails might have been blushing at that point. “I will always regret the choice I made the first time I had sex as a human. With you, I am certain I would not regret it.”

“You can’t know that,” I said.

“I suppose not,” he answered. I felt my lips flatten out, my eyes dropping from his. Well, at least he was honest. His hand gripped my face, smooth fingers, barely calloused despite how deadly they were in battle. Their touch on my face was gentle and soft. He drew my attention back to his face. “But I have faith.”


	5. Chapter 5

At some point between our massage, and the things that happened after, the staff had managed to switch the big tables in the lodge dining room out for a bunch of little tables for individual couples. Our clothes were still in the massage room (no idea what people were going to think of that) so Cas and I just grabbed whatever we could lay our hands on first in the closet. He’d offered to go back and grab them for us, but we couldn’t guarantee the room would be empty. 

“No big deal, Cas. We’ll go in for lunch. I’ll make like I’m going to look for the restroom and get our clothes out of there.”

Six of the seven tables were already full, so maybe we weren’t as on time as we thought.

“Go mingle,” I said, kissing Cas on the cheek. “I’ll be right back.” 

It was a little awkward crossing the room with everyone there, but no one really paid that much attention to me. I tried the door to the massage room, and the handle twisted no problem. I figured no one would be naked because everyone was at lunch, but I didn’t figure they’d just leave the thing open! The lockpicks got to stay in my pocket.

One thing I’d learned about this spy crap, it was important to not look like you were being sneaky. Don’t look around to make sure no one’s watching, that’s a dead give away. Instead, just go where you’re going. It’s a lot easier to make people believe you ended up in the massage room instead of the bathroom if you don’t look like you don’t want anyone to know you’re there. 

The room was empty.

Well, not completely empty, but the massage tables had been scrubbed to within an inch of their lives, and everything was put away. Our clothes were nowhere to be seen. Fuck. The employees would be talking about this one for a long time.

I couldn’t find it in me to be upset over losing the clothes. They didn’t matter. I’d even give up the brownies here if it meant spending more time with Cas. Because holy shit, this was something we were actually going to try. 

I kind of got stuck when I met him back at our table. Was I supposed to pull out his chair for him now? Was he going to try to do it for me? Maybe we’d pull out each other’s chairs and then kind of cross in the middle? 

He must have been thinking the same thing, because he almost looked a little sick with nerves. I squeezed his hand, and he kissed my cheek and sat down. Quick and decisive, kind of like when he’s fighting.

We were barely in our seats before they handed us a lunch menu. A whole bunch of grilled sandwiches. Cas asked for the halloumi, whatever that was. I just had steak, because I could read that. Plus it was all coming with garlic fries, which sounded pretty fucking awesome. I had kind of worked up an appetite.

The waiter left. It wasn’t Munny again, thank god. This thing with Cas still felt like it could fall apart any second, and I really didn’t want him butting in and making me feel like Cas would rather have him instead of me. Hell, he probably deserved Munny over me. Guy spoke more than one language, had a steady job.

“Stop that right now.”

I looked up at him, affronted. “Stop what?”

“I don’t have to read your thoughts, you’re radiating self-hatred.” I rolled my eyes, but he didn’t react to that. Not even a bitchface. “Do you trust me?” he finally asked, so sincerely I had to lean back and give him a serious answer.

“Yeah, Cas. I trust you with my life.” He looked a little put out by that. I didn’t know what he wanted me to say.

Eventually he nodded, although he didn’t seem happy about my answer. “Do you trust me with mine?” he asked.

“What the fuck is that supposed to mean?”

“You trust me to keep you safe. You trust me to keep your brother safe. Do you trust me to keep myself safe?”

“I mean, yeah. Of course.”

“Even though I’ve made bad decisions.”

“We all make bad decisions. That’s par for the course.”

After another moment of deep thinking he smiled gently. “Then trust that I know what I want, and what I want is you. Trust that you’re good for me. Can you do that?”

“Yeah, angel. I can do that.”

Someone giggled like a little girl behind me. Orinda Regenbogen kissed me on the cheek. “I’m so glad you two kissed and made up.”

“Yeah, now you can cry in each other’s arms when we kick your ass in the Winter Games,” Liza said, grinning widely when I turned to look. She looked pretty happy for us though. I was glad. I was pretty happy for us, too.

But yeah, those things. “What exactly are these games?”

Orinda laughed. “Well now I _know_ we’re going to kick your ass.”

That was, frankly, not fucking helpful.

“Just a little friendly sporting competition out on the grounds. It should be fun.”

Fun? My first reaction was to grump about it, but the more I thought about it…maybe it would be fun. Hell, I had a super-powered new boyfriend, this could actually be kind of cool.

o0o

“Dean,” Cas began as we trudged through the snow, “I’m not certain I understand the point of these festivities.”

I shrugged. “I don’t know, it’s kind of fun. I mean, we test our bodies all the time, but it’s always life or death. It could be kind of nice to exert ourselves but know that no matter what, we’re going to come out okay.”

He smiled. Well, not really a smile. Cas doesn’t really smile, does he? But his lip kind of quirked up and I could tell he liked what I said. “I think I would like to win, Dean.”

I laughed, following the bright red painted arrows to wherever we were supposed to be going. “Well that’s nice and all, but I’m pretty sure we still have people dying on our hands.”

I was about three steps ahead when I realized he hadn’t answered. I turned around and he was standing, staring at the snow. “Cas?” I asked. “You okay?”

When he looked up at me, his eyes were clouded. I felt something pull in my chest, something I haven’t felt in fucking forever. But then he nodded slowly. “Of course, Dean. You’re right.” He started walking again, still talking. “Nevertheless, if we are here anyway, I would like to see what enjoying this is like.”

God, what an ass I could be sometimes. Cas had never had the chance to just do something fun—just stretch his wings for the hell of it. And here I was raining all over his god damned parade. My arm slid around his back, the coat squishing beneath it. “I can’t promise anything if there’s an emergency, but yeah. You want this? This is what we’re going to do.” He smiled. Shit, I’m not sure I’ve ever seen him smile like that before. It was kind of big and gummy and… well it was half scary for a second, I thought I was looking at Lucifer or something in Cas’s body. But it wasn’t. He didn’t hold himself weird. He wasn’t acting weird, well, a little, but it was…it was soft. Happy. Shit. “But you can’t just magic your way through everything. We have to make it look like you’re just human.”

“Fine,” he said, quiet but still content. “But I’d still like to win.”

I had to chuckle. “Well, we can win most of them, anyway.”

He reached out and pulled me close. His hand rested on my arm, right on top of where I had once been scarred when he pulled me from Hell. The scar had long since faded away with the number of times he’d healed me.

And maybe what we had here was too new for me to really miss that scar. I mean, who wants a scar anyway? But I still wondered, just for a second, what it would be like to still have that connection, and feel this…this whatever we were going through on top of it.

Cas rolled his shoulders in the new coat Sam had bought for him. It was longer than mine, navy blue, and almost as puffed up. He held his arms out to the side awkwardly. “Is this really necessary?” he asked. He looked so damn disappointed.

“It’s just for a couple of hours, Cas. You’ve been through worse.”

He glowered at me. “Demons invented winter wear.”

I laughed. Shit, I couldn’t even remember the last time I laughed like that. “You know what, Cas? You may be right.”

When we got there, the first station they had set up was for tug of war. Hell, this wouldn’t be that hard. They had set up some kind of brackets, and we were up first against a couple we hadn’t met yet—Mr. and Mrs. Morales. My feet crunched into the deep, wet snow, and I was getting a lot more traction than I thought I would. Shannon laughed at us when I told Cas to take the anchor position, but I just sent him a wink. These guys had no idea who they were messing with. It was almost unfair. Not that we would win, but that I wouldn’t really get to show off. 

Hell, when the whistle blew, I was basically just setting the pace for us to beat them. I mean, I felt a little bad. But it was just a stupid game. And when we won and were waiting two more rounds to get up again, I got to sit with Cas and eat all the brownies I wanted. Seriously, you cannot luck out more than that. Cas just had this adorable little smile on his face. We cheered for the Regenbogens, but they didn’t get too far. Shannon and Samir did though.

I wasn’t at all surprised when we went up against them in the finals. My gut was full of chocolate-y goodness and I had an angel at my back. The afternoon was just starting and all things considered I was in a pretty good mood. The snow in the area they had cleared out for the fight was packed down hard, it was slippery just getting into position. My gloves slipped on the rope, wet from the snow, and I realized how much more difficult this was going to be than the first time around. Feeling Cas at my back I relaxed a little. This was supposed to be fun. And hey, if any of the guests had murderous tendencies, they’d probably come out this afternoon.

Hey, maybe that’s what happened to the Shoemakers. Maybe they were pretty buff and someone didn’t want them to win at the Winter games. I would have to remember to ask what the prizes were after we kicked Shannon and Samir’s asses. 

Rosa from painting class blew the whistle. I still wasn’t one hundred percent sure about her, but the last time I talked to Sam he said he still hadn’t had a chance to question her, there were too many people working in the kitchens and he was trying to get through them. Since Munny was working in the kitchen, I figured he’d better keep at it.

I could feel other guys pulling but I knew they didn’t have anything on me and Cas. Baby steps back, the middle of the rope was like two feet away from our mark in the snow. And then my foot slipped on the damned packed snow. I started to go down, and the next thing I knew both of Cas’s arms were wrapped around me, the rope forgotten, and Samir and Shannon were stumbling backwards. 

“Damn it, Cas. What did you have to go and do that for?” I asked while everyone ran over to congratulate the winners. Or maybe they were over there to help them up off the ground. “We could have won.”

“You were going to fall,” he said, like that explained everything. 

“It’s some ice, man! So unless you got reason to believe that some monster is going to jump out and kill us if I go down, I think I’ll be fine.” Cas’s eyes opened wide, and he looked past me toward the other couples. It’s not like they were paying attention. And even if they were, they all half believed in this yeti thing anyway. 

Cas looked at the ground. “You’re right, Dean. You don’t need protection here.”

Fuck. “For fuck’s sake… It’s fine, Cas. Whatever. It’s a stupid game. Hell, that’s not even why we’re here.”

He nodded slowly. “That’s true.”

“Maybe we should blow this shit off. See if we can figure out what the hell’s going on here. Call Sam again.” All of a sudden, I couldn’t believe myself. Between the brownies and whatever the fuck was going on between me and Cas, it was like I’d totally forgotten that people were dying. 

Cas took a step back. “I think…I think if Sam had anything important to share, he would have called us. We should stick to the plan. Remain with the other guests and see if anything happens. We can’t protect them if we leave them alone.”

Well crap. Even I couldn’t argue that. The crunch of boots through the snow announced that the rest of the group was trudging off toward another area. I turned and hurried to keep up. Like Cas said, I wouldn’t be any good to any of them if I stayed behind. Besides, most of the front-line staff were out here. I guess Cas and I were on Rosa duty. Sam would have to take the behind the scenes staff.

“Dean,” Cas called behind me. I stopped and turned. “I think…it’s okay if we decide to have a little fun, too.” His eyes were almost pleading. I tromped back two steps through the snow, grabbed his hand, and pulled him forward. 

I wasn’t sure if fun was necessarily on the menu today, not when people could die. But we were taking care of it together, and to be honest, I couldn’t think of anything better than that.

o0o

Di was standing on a platform in the middle of an open field and she had us all gathered around. “We thought we’d move on to a game of Capture the Flag!” She sounded way too freaking cheerful for someone whose co-worker was brutally murdered yesterday. Come to think of it, literally nothing had shut down since Leila was found dead. I would have thought there would have been some therapists brought in, or some fucking police, or maybe some crime scene tape…but nope. They must have been trying to keep the deaths out of the media, which I could respect, but it was still kind of a shitty thing to keep under wraps. I mean, it worked for us, but it was just weird as fuck. Cas put his hand on my shoulder and I tuned back into whatever Di was saying.

“You’ll all be given a color to defend against and a color whose flag you must capture. The first team to bring their captured flag to this podium will be awarded winning points.” 

Well shit, that sounded easy enough. Hell, if people weren’t watching, Cas could just zap over to a flag and zap it to the podium in two seconds while I…well hell. I wouldn’t be much help in that scenario. I guess it didn’t really matter, because having a real life angel on my team was kind of cheating. 

“Of course this isn’t just a race, but we don’t want anyone hurt either. You have everything you need around you—you can stop your opponents however you like using the snow. Snowballs, snow forts, the choice is yours.” She started directing different couples to the different colored flags - red, orange, yellow, green, blue, purple and brown. Cas and I got assigned to the yellow flag.

“There are far too many rules at play in this game, Dean,” Cas grumbled as soon as they blew the whistle to begin preparations.

I shrugged. “Games have rules, Cas.”

“There’s no reason we shouldn’t be able to hide or move the flag. If we were in a real battle situation, the two best strategies would be to either use the flag to draw our enemies out or to hide it while we attack.”

“Alright, but this isn’t an epic battle, Cas. It’s like…a training mission. Didn’t you ever have those?” I didn’t know what else to do, so I picked up some snow and started to ball it up. It was wet, like the stuff at the tug of war, and it packed nice, making a heavy ball. I could see these slowing someone down if I got a direct hit. I trusted Cas to be careful not to hurt any of the civilians.

“Angels were created to be warriors, Dean,” he said, bending down to copy my motions. “We are heaven’s perfect weapon. We weren’t trained, we were programmed.” He looked hard at the ball forming in his hands. I realized it was already shaped better than mine. “When that was finished, we had missions. We sometimes gathered intelligence and would share with one another, but training was…not a matter of practice for us. You lived, and you fought again, or you did not.”

Huh. And that brought up a whole slew of new questions. Was there like, an infinite number of angels, just popping up when they needed them? Or had their been until Chuck had gone AWOL on them?

Nah, you know what? We could discuss angel babies another time. Cas was already kicking my ass in the snowball department, three down to my one. And the asshole had started after me. “Well,” I said, “since we can’t kill anyone, or move the flag, what do you suggest? I have a ton of ideas if we had a bigger team, but just the two of us?”

“I think it would be prudent if I stayed back and defended the flag. I may find it difficult to maintain cover as a human in an offensive position.”

“Alright, so you can defend against,” I looked over at the blue flag, “the Morales’s, and I’ll go after the Luong’s red flag.”

Cas was thoughtful while he continued to make a stockpile of snowballs. “I believe in this type of game it is usually the less physically fit player who would play the defensive role. Does that seem standard?”

“Eh. It’s not a bad strategy. They don’t have to do as much running around. They can try fighting smarter instead of harder.”

Cas nodded. “Then I will expect to go up against Mr. Morales. A game of tug of war doesn’t give away much when this game calls for agility and strategy. 

I thought about it. The guy was built, broader than Cas or I, but not heavy. He could probably move pretty fast if he wanted to. “He’s going to be agile. He won’t stay in one place long. You’ll be better off giving him a mostly clear path to the flag so he doesn’t have anywhere to hide.” He nodded seriously. 

“And you will most likely face off against Mrs. Luong. She seems fit and fast, but you have a stronger arm. I would suggest an aggressive approach to keep her pinned down while you go for the flag. Once you have it, do not stop running.” I know he must have caught the look I gave him. Do not stop running? Hell, I’d run with injuries way worse than a little bump from a snowball. “Is there anywhere you can store additional ammunition on your person?”

“Not without it melting. People are hot, generally speaking.”

He looked me over so seriously, leaning close so I could feel his breath ghosting over my skin as he whispered in my ear. “I can’t speak for humans in general, but it is true, you are indeed ‘hot.’”

Whoa. I was feeling shivers down my spine and they weren’t from the cold.

Now, there are worse times than during a game to explore those shivers, and frankly the whole couple pretext might let us get away with it, but I was not looking forward to that kind of distraction out here. I batted my eyes at him instead, my voice laced with sarcasm. “You sure know how to make a girl feel pretty.”

Before he could respond the whistle blew, and I started running toward the red flag. I had to go around the stage in the middle, but that wasn’t really a handicap since all the teams would have to do the same thing. The first sprint was easy. No one, or at least no one in that third of the course, was paying any attention to anyone except the teams they were directly up against. I was able to catch up and surpass the team playing next to us, although that really wasn’t much of a surprise. When you spend your life, since four years old, running from things that are stronger and faster than most humans, you kind of get an edge. 

There were several snow barriers around the red flag, but I could still see it waving in the cold wind above the snow. I couldn’t find Mrs. Luong anywhere, so I figured she must be hunkered down behind one of their snow forts. It would work in my favor. Once I figured out where she was throwing from, it would be easy to keep a bank of snow between the two of us while I grabbed the flag.

I’d run past three of the stupid forts without any sign of her. Hell, maybe the forts were some sort of big distraction. Maybe they’d both gone after their flag. It wasn’t like single team capture the flag, so maybe they even had a good solid game plan. Of course, that also made my job a hell of a lot easier. I was running past a fourth when something came out of nowhere and hit me from behind. I mean, I know it was a snowball. It could only have been a snowball, but the way it hit me in the back of the head, it might as well have been a rock thrown by a goddamn vampire. Hell, if it wasn’t daylight I’d have figured it for a vampire anyway. 

I kept running, but the cold was like a fucking ice pick on the back of my neck. I swear if I’d been packing a gun, I would have pulled it right then. My hand even went to the back of my pants. I looked over my shoulder and saw Mr. Luong gearing up for another throw. Shit, that bastard had an arm on him. 

I ignored him and ran for the flag. It’s just water. Cold and stupid water. You say a couple of Latin words over it and dunk in a rosary and you got a weapon against half of what goes bump in the night. Water was not going to fuck over Dean Winchester. Not when I was trying to get the flag for Cas. We might not have won the first contest, but sure as shit I was going to do this for him. 

When the next snowball went sailing past me, I laughed out loud, raising my hand in a one fingered salute as I ran. There was nothing left between me and that waving piece of red cloth, just waiting for me to bring it back to the stage. If I did this right, maybe Cas would climb up on stage with me. Hug me in front of all these people and I’d have to fight him off and tell him to be a man about it. And just maybe he’d ignore my protest. 

The flag was twenty feet away. Ten. Five. My hand closed around the pole and it pulled easily out of the wet snow, hardly packed down.

The plan was not to make a target of myself, and since any other team might try to slow me down, I took half a second to crumple the cloth, hiding it in my hand. Listen, I know whoever gets the flag is supposed to be some kind of cheering victor in these games, but real battles don’t work like that. Unless you want to draw someone out, you hide it when you’ve got the good stuff. If these guys couldn’t figure that out, I sure as shit wasn’t going to be the one to tell them.

I was only two steps from where the flag had been planted when another snowball hit me from behind. It caught me in the back of the knee and my steps faltered. God damn it! It was fucking snow. Not some ghost or demon or yeti. Well, maybe it was the yeti. Shit, could the yeti look like a human? We’d kind of thought about shifters before. This guy had awesome fucking control of the snow. Could Mr. Luong, and maybe Mrs. Luong, be some new kind of shifter? 

The snowballs were coming faster and faster, way too fast to be made by a human in that short of a time. But they were just snow, and I’d run far more injured than this. I could see the stage now, it wasn’t far. There were a few other people with flags, further from the stage than me, and most were out of breath. Just a few more steps. I threw myself up on the stage and raised the flag in the air. Hell, if Luong caught me out at this point, everyone would know what he was.

Only when I looked back at him, he was standing there in a pile of snowballs. He must have had fifty or sixty, just sitting there waiting for me. Not counting the ones he’d thrown. And they were tiny as fuck. Like little snowball bullets. Shit, no wonder they’d hurt. They’d probably been packed into pure ice. Shit. That couldn’t have been legal.

Cas took a few minutes before he joined me on the stage. Apparently I had missed the part where we were playing for second place. But he managed to hold everyone off from our flag. Not that I was surprised. 

When he did climb up, I was the one that pulled him close. “Are you sure about the Luongs Cas? Bastard has some arm.”

I could see the disappointment in his face, so I backpedaled. “Hey, you know you’re not just here as a monster-sensor, right, Cas? I need you here, and I want you here. We’ll figure this out, you and me.”

Cas sighed and sent me a sad smile. He leveled a thoughtful gaze on Hanh, who was rubbing his elbow while his wife whispered in his ear. “I can assure you, Dean. They are human. He may be quite strong, but I suspect he injured himself throwing like that. He will have to be more careful, considering his profession requires full use of his arms.”

Whoops. Sucks for him.

At least we hadn’t let the monster walk right under our noses the whole time. And maybe Cas stayed pretty close to me up on that platform, which was nice, too. Because he was warm, obviously.


	6. Chapter 6

The staff guided us inside the lodge through a back door and gave us a few minutes to take off our coats and drink something warm. All of the other guests were chatting and laughing. Hell, even Cas was smiling with them. But something still felt off. 

We’d been here two days, there had been another death, and we still weren’t any closer to stopping whatever was doing it. Striking out on a case? That shit happens. Sometimes, the monsters are just too good. Sometimes you don’t know everything you need to know. You find more hunters, you find more info, you regroup. You go again. 

But I was half terrified, sitting in that brightly lit room drinking sweet hot chocolate and eating every brownie they put in front of me, that maybe I was losing my touch. Maybe this time I just wasn’t doing everything I needed to do. What if people kept dying out here because I had my god damned head in the clouds? 

And then there was Cas… leaning against the wall with a mug of coffee in his hand, laughing with the guy who’d kicked our asses in tug of war. And I just… I knew him. Yeah, he fucked up sometimes, but didn’t we all? And okay, sure his family was a little much to take on, but everyone’s got baggage. He was like a freaking beacon in that room. Hell, I didn’t know how else to describe him. 

And I think, maybe, that was the moment I decided. Cas, he wasn’t just family. There was something more there. Maybe he didn’t need me, not like Sam did. But maybe that was a good thing. I didn’t have to protect Cas. We could just be us. Because when push came to shove, I trusted Sammy, but I had to make sure he got out alive. Cas could take on things I couldn’t dream of. And if there was one thing he’d shown over and over again, he’d do anything for me, for my brother, for humanity.

Shit, how had I never noticed before?

I didn’t even realize I was out of the seat before I had crossed the room, practically pinned him against the wall in front of everyone, and was kissing him. 

I’d been a little rough with some of my partners in the past, if I thought that was the kind of thing they’d enjoy. But it was always just foreplay. A means to an end. Being with Cas was different. It was like some kind of fucking dam had broken and I wanted Cas to know everything I was feeling—how badly I wanted him. I didn’t even know we were in front of everyone, it was just something I had to do.

Which made the applause pretty fucking awkward. One good glare from Cas was enough to get everyone quiet. Bad ass Angel of the Lord has his perks.

It was only a few seconds after everyone had calmed down that the sisters, Mattie and Marci came in. They were practically bubbling over each other describing the next event.

“So what we’re going to be doing next—”

The first was cut off by the second “—Is probably the most fun you’ll have all day!”

“You get to relive your childhoods!”

“With no adults telling you to do things differently.”

“Well, except your partners!” They giggled in tandem. It may have actually harmonized. I think my ears were ringing.

They sure seemed excited about this. Maybe they’d had some brownies too. Or maybe they’d finally spent too much time with Di.

Actually, come to think of those brownies, I figured I’d grab another one before they brought me out to whatever we were supposed to do next. I doubted it was more snack time.

“We know you’ve always wanted to build that perfect snowman!”

“But you never had enough snow—”

“Or enough time—”

“Well, they still won’t get enough time,” giggled…the taller one. God at this point I couldn’t even keep up. 

“You’ll each have a designated area to stay in that matches your team color. You have two hours! Go!”

I didn’t feel too bad when literally no one in the room went anywhere. I caught Cas’s eye and he shrugged. We stood there for a hot minute, which was fine, because hey, I had brownies and it was warm inside, before the sisters laughed at themselves again. “Oops,” one of them said. “This way!”

It wasn’t too hard to find the roped off sections once we left through the doors of the lodge and crossed the parking lot. Flags, identical to the ones in the last game, were stuck in the corners of each boundary. I felt an arm go around my waist and looked over to see Cas standing next to me. Yeah, this wouldn’t be too bad. Hell, I hadn’t built a snowman since I was a kid. I’m not even sure that what Sam and I made back then could be called snowmen.

“You look like you’re having fun.” Cas said beside me, his voice low. I could barely hear it over the sound of everyone’s boots in the snow.

I looked at him, and his blue eyes were smiling back at me. “Yeah, Cas. I think I am. There’s not much that’s better than making a snowman, you know? I haven’t done it in forever.”

“I haven’t done it ever,” he said, still smiling a little. 

“That is just about perfect then,” I told him, wrapping my own arm around him and climbing over the waist-high ropes into our section. He looked at me, his eyebrow raised. Shit, I hadn’t realized before just how sexy that was. Damn. Not the time, Dean. “Means no matter what we do here, this will be the best snowman you’ve ever made.”

And holy shit, I actually got a laugh for that. Not a big one, but damn. I was a little impressed with myself. I could feel my smile grow wider.

As soon as the whistle blew Cas and I each bent over and started rolling up little snowballs. We made them bigger and bigger, packing them tighter. I tapped Cas on the shoulder, making sure I had his attention before I started rolling mine along the ground, demonstrating how to do it once the ball of snow got too large. Not gonna lie, he could have totally held it up with one hand and kept packing, no matter how heavy the wet snow got, but for the look of the thing, it would probably be better for him to roll it when it got heavier like anyone else. Also, it meant I got to sneak a look at his ass every once in awhile.

Alright, maybe I had looked before. But knowing that he was okay with me looking, that was a totally different experience. I had to shake myself out of it and keep working on the snowman. This was supposed to be fun, and Cas deserved some fun. God damned angel brothers never let him have any before. He had all of history to catch up on.

When I figured we had a good base, I whistled to get his attention, gesturing him over to the middle of our area. Damn bastard just stood and picked up the giant fucking snowball like it was nothing. I almost freaked out, but it fell apart in his hands before anyone else really got a chance to see it, bits of snow just raining off it onto his boots. I laughed until he looked too put out. Then I went and rolled the snowball I’d been working on into the middle for the base and called him over. We crouched together in the snow, trying to keep our knees dry, and I pulled snow up from the ground to pack in around the base, keeping it heavy, running my hands over the whole thing to make it smoother. I could feel Cas’s eyes on me. 

He’d watched me a thousand times before doing stupid little things, things that didn’t even matter, but it was always just…Cas. I don’t know. He didn’t mean anything by it. You only pick up so much, no matter how many millennia you’ve got under your belt, when your whole life is being a warrior. He was still kind of sheltered—learning. But knowing he was watching me now, I couldn’t help but wonder if it had been more, even then.

His hands reached up tentatively, adding more snow on his side of the base, smoothing like he’d seen me doing. I smiled across at him and he smiled back. There were a thousand fucking words on the tip of my tongue, and damn it I didn’t know what a single one was. I stood up, feeling my joints popping, clapped him on the back a few times, and started making another snowball from the remains of the one he’d dropped.

Needless to say, between the two of us, there wasn’t a whole lot of snowman building experience to go around. I mean, eventually we got the physics down I think, but by the time they blew the whistle we mostly just had a lump of snow about half my height.

“Go stand by our snowman,” I told Cas.

He looked confused, but did it anyway. I pulled out my phone and snapped a picture of them together.

“Hey,” someone said behind me, “I can take a picture of both of you, if you’d like.”

I turned to see Liza smiling at me. “Hey, thanks.” I walked up to Cas and put my arm around his shoulders, pulling him close, smiling like I hadn’t done in years.

[](https://ibb.co/hAbd3k)

The shot wasn’t half bad when Liza handed me back the camera, but something was missing. Hell, even I wasn’t sure what it was at first, but then the tall trees behind Cas caught my eye. Before I even knew what I was doing I climbed over the ropes holding us in our section. They’d already decided the Regenbogen’s had won, so it’s not like it was really cheating. It took a little bit of climbing to get up high enough to get my hand around a branch with some needles still on it, but I found two decent sized ones and broke them off, letting them drop to the ground. The tree smelled sweet, like vanilla or something.

Cas was under me when I sent the second one to the ground. “Dean?” he asked, like I’d lost my mind. “What are you doing to this tree?” He put a hand on it. I felt something travel up through my body, and knew he had done something with his grace. Was he fucking soothing the tree? Wow. Huh.

I jumped down, not really answering him. I wasn’t sure how to explain it, and if I tried, I wouldn’t finish what I wanted to do. I was on a mission, and the branches were in my hand before he could stop me. I was flipping them this way and that as I took wide strides across the snow, looking for the best angle. 

The sun was pretty low in the sky already, stretching the shadow of our lumpy snowman to a pretty impressive height. Now usually, you stuffed some branches in a snowman, and you had arms. But these were heavy and curved with pine needles. I could have stripped them, sure, but that didn’t feel right. Not for this. I knelt in front of the snowman and held up the first branch at an angle until I liked the way it lined up, then used as much strength as I could to drive it into the packed snow. Then I did the same with the other. I took a step back, evaluating my handiwork. With the branches sticking out behind the snowman, it kind of looked like it had wings. It wasn’t until I was satisfied that I looked back at Cas, who was still standing by the tree, looking at me with his head tilted to the side. I got up and moved to the side, using a finger to call him over by me.

Cas didn’t come right away; he stepped slowly up to the snowman, well, snow angel now, and looked around. Sure that no one was watching, he reached out and touched both of the branches gently. I could see the flash in his eyes, moving through the branches. A light seemed to shoot down the center of the snowman, half glowing like a lightning strike, grounding itself deep below the snow. “Cas?” I asked. He smiled and walked over to me.

“I think that’s a nice spot for a tree. What do you think?”

I blinked at him a few times. Had he really just grown a tree from a couple of broken branches? “I think it’s an awesome place for a tree.”

We followed the other couples toward the setting sun, our shadows lengthening behind us. It was kind of cool knowing that our little dinky snow mound had the shadow of an awesome, imposing angel. It was kind of awesome, too, knowing that tree would be there for a while.

o0o

We had to run to catch up with the rest of the group. Shit, I never should have gotten so carried away with that snowman and forgot that we were supposed to be protecting people. But there must have been safety in numbers, because there had been no attacks and everyone was fine when we caught up with them near the pond. The last time I’d been out this way had been our picnic. The first time Cas had kissed me, the taste of brownie still on my lips. To think I’d run from Cas after that. God what a dumb ass.

Around the frozen water were piles of snowballs, and I was half sure they were about to start another knock-out snowball fight when some hotel employee—a girl we hadn’t met, probably one of the ones we missed coming late—called us over to the picnic table where we’d eaten on the last time we were out here. The table was piled high with these weird strap on things. 

Get your head of the gutter. They were like, ice skates, but just the bottom part that could be strapped onto a boot. I guess they saved the place some money in rental skates, but honestly, they were probably an accident waiting to happen. I’d seen these before, but only in old movies—and the back of Bobby’s garage. Shit. This did not look promising.

But Cas grabbed my hand and practically dragged me over to the table, grabbing two pairs of the lethal looking things. Come to think of it, not a bad idea. If whatever was causing problems here decided to show up, they’d make decent impromptu weapons. But then we were shoving our heels into the cups at the back and strapping the webbing over our boots. I mean, I guess the nylon was better than leather. But by how much?

Once everyone had the deadly weapons strapped haphazardly to their feet, they lined us up at one end of the pond. The woman who was running this game, and honestly, I didn’t catch her name, had some kind of remote, and she pressed the button with a flourish. All the piles of snowballs must have been covering some hidden lights buried in the snow, because they lit up like weird little lamps. I guess it was kind of pretty? If you like that sort of thing. It didn’t seem like it was gonna give us a shit ton of light, but the sun was still shining through the trees, sort of, and it’s not like a race across the pond was going to take us a hell of a long time. With any luck, we’d be done and inside for dinner soon. Oh hell, I knew we’d already had some, but maybe they’d have more of those brownies for dessert.

The other couples seemed pretty happy with the light show, as far as I could see. Well, except Samir, but I’m pretty sure Shannon said he was a big technology guy anyway. He mostly looked annoyed at the skates. Hell, maybe I would have liked the lights better, if I hadn’t just gotten my own private magic light show back at the snowmen.

The rules were pretty straightforward: the first couple who both touched the snow on the other side of the pond got the points. And yep, I was just about ready for this game to be over. Time for dinner.

When the whistle blew I took off like a shot. Let me tell you, I’ve run on ice before. Yeah, it sucks. Boots are not really made for running on ice, but it’s doable. You run, you do the job, you get the hell off the slippery shit. The skates were something else. Who the fuck does this for fun? I mean, I get it. You live somewhere cold and you gotta cross this shit all the time, yeah, you’re gonna figure out a better way to do it. Hell, you’ll probably have contests for it and everything, and yeah, I feel ya. But people who don’t need to cross the ice? Doing this for fun? 

It was way harder to keep my feet under me than I thought it would be. And it’s not like I had a whole lot of experience with roller skates either. I think I went on a date to a roller rink like twice in high school, but these skates didn’t seem to work the same way at all. Roller skates you could kind of push sideways, and with these it was like…well fuck, it sucked. I wasn’t getting very far very fast. I may have fallen on my ass more than once.

Cas skated up to me, not completely steady himself, and tried to pull me up. Mostly he just kicked my feet a couple of times and fell on top of me. It should have pissed me off, but I don’t know, it wasn’t really that big a deal. I mean, I guess if the yeti or whatever had jumped out, it might have been a bigger problem, but the thing seemed scared of big groups, so I wasn’t too concerned. 

We got back to our feet and were off again. We weren’t exactly in the lead, but we weren’t dead last either. I pushed off with my right foot and felt something give as I lifted it. I put my foot back down on the ice, but the blade had slipped from under my foot and I felt a sharp pain in my ankle as I went down. I knew from experience it was the bone. Fuck.

At least it didn’t look like a compound fracture. The nylon holding the skate onto my boot had been cut, probably by Cas’s skate when he was trying to help me up. I knew these things weren’t a good idea. Cas was by my side in a second, his hand warm on my ankle. “It’s broken,” he whispered.

I batted his hand away. Shit, the last thing we needed was for him to put on another light show with so many people around. What if someone here was the shifter? What a way to freaking out us. And even if they were just regular civilians, what were we supposed to do then?

“Just help me up,” I gritted through my teeth. “I’ll be fine.”

“Dean, you need to be healed.”

“And I’ll let you do it. When we go back to the cabin.” We were drawing a crowd at this point. “Listen, just help me walk. There’s too many eyes around here. Besides, after a fall like that, they’d be suspicious if I didn’t at least look hurt for a while.”

Judging by the way his jaw set and he narrowed his eyes, he wasn’t completely on board with the plan, but he was willing to let it go. He unstrapped both of his skates and my extra—probably looking for more traction so he could safely pull me up. It was too bad angel superpowers didn’t include balance on ice skates.

“Oh no!” Di said. “You’re going to miss the last event!”

Another god damned race. “That’s ok, lady. I think I just need to go sit down for a while.”

“Dean, please,” Cas said, and I knew he was asking to heal me again.  
I shook my head. “We just need a few hours alone in our cabin, Cas. I’ll be fine. It’s not that bad.” No one had to know Cas was trying to ask for. If they thought he wanted to stay out and finish the games, that was fine with me.

If we could get away from the crowd long enough for him to heal me, we could take a little time and call it a miracle cure. As long as the couples stayed together for dinner, it was unlikely anyone would be attacked during the next few hours, and when Cas and I came back out, no one would be the wiser.

I sat shivering on the ice, still waiting for Cas to pull me up, and watching him glare at me instead. The concern that had been evident on his face only a moment before had been replaced by a deep scowl. He had something on his mind. Shit. 

“What is the last event?” Cas asked. I looked at him with my eyes wide. We had more important things to take care of here. Like my broken ankle.

“Well, it’s a sled race. Except instead of a dog sled, the guests pull the sleds over the snow. But he needs to rest! Are you sure you don’t need medical help, Mr. Winchester?”

I opened my mouth to say I just needed some time off my feet, but Cas cut me off. “I’m sure we can stay out just a little longer,” he said. His eyes were hard when he looked at me. So maybe he was a little pissed that I wasn’t getting on the heal-me-now train. “After all, it’s our last night with these lovely people. It could be our last chance, you might say.”

God damn it. I didn’t know how else I could argue with him without looking like a complete bastard. And he was kind of right, it was our last chance to catch whatever was killing guests without blowing our cover. “Absolutely,” I said with the biggest smile I could muster, which wasn’t very big. “I’d love to stick it out. It’s just a sprain or something. It’s not like it’s broken.” I practically growled the last at Cas. Di looked nervously between us for a minute, but finally stepped away, leading us toward another clearing. 

At least Cas wasn’t so pissed he made me walk on my own.

o0o

“Cas, this is stupid,” I whispered in his ear as he helped me across the snow. It wasn’t as bad as it could have been; he made it look like I was carrying most of my own weight, but I knew he had me. “If something happens, I can’t fight. I’m a liability like this. Just take me back to the room, heal me, and we’ll say we iced it for five minutes and I’m fine.”

“You were the one who insisted I not heal you in front of all of these people,” he said, faking a kiss. Asshole. “If you’re comfortable enough to make it back to the room on your ankle, you’ll be fine for a little longer while we finish up here.”

“Fuck you,” I gritted through my teeth as he let me take a little more of my own weight for a second. Bastard.

A clearing opened up with a bunch of sleds in it. Cas sat me down on the first one. Well, on top of the pile of boxes in it. They were colored like Christmas presents, but hard underneath me. We’d hardly gone two hundred yards from the pond, but my ankle was throbbing and I could feel it swelling. I tried to breathe through the pain. If I let everyone see how bad it was, they’d never believe I was feeling better after Cas healed me. But damn, it was a lot of work. I tried to focus on pretty much anything else, the bows on the boxes that Cas had crushed when he put me down, and who would have to repair them, or if they even would be repaired. It didn’t work half as well as I wanted it to, but it let me get through the next few minutes.

Di was droning on about how each team was supposed to grab the ropes in the front and work together to pull the sled to the finish line. Holy fuck, I couldn’t do that. This was bullshit. I could hobble along well enough if Cas was supporting me, but no way was I going to be able to hold myself up while he pulled the sled. Fuck fuck fuck.

Before I knew it, Cas was standing next to me, helping me up again. “Cas, this is a bad idea, man.”

He ignored me completely, reaching around my back and pulling me to my feet. I hid the wince when he set me down. Son of a bitch that hurt! 

There was no way we could compete in this race. I looked at the ropes for pulling our sled. Yeah, Cas could pull the sled, no problem. Or he could make it look like I was walking on my own two feet. But no way could he do both. I was trying to stand, but mostly I was letting him hold me up with one of his hands around my waist and the other on the rope. I wanted off my damn ankle. 

It’s one thing to break a bone in the middle of a fight, the adrenaline is pumping and it’s life or death. Fighting through is the only thing to do. But trying to fight through for some stupid game was fucking ridiculous. 

Anything could jump out at us or the other couples any second now, and Cas would have to drop me, drop the damn sled, and I’d be absolutely no help. This was so stupid. If I could let go of him, I would have pulled my phone out and called Sam to talk some sense into the angel. 

I know Di looked over at us to see if I was okay to keep going. And I wanted to say ‘Hell no, call this stupid shit off,’ but Cas nodded, the traitor. And the whistle blew. I hobbled a few steps, but it was clear I wasn’t getting anywhere fast on this ankle. And I knew Cas could have carried me, or he could have pulled the sled, but managing the two of us was too damned awkward. My ankle was throbbing again, and I could feel my boots getting tighter, from just a couple of steps with less support, and I was halfway to telling Cas to just heal me then and there and just mind-whammy anyone who noticed something strange. 

I took another step, and another, but the third landed weird and the pain shot up my leg. I was down on the ground before I realized I’d fallen. But before I could really start complaining—alright, maybe I was complaining a little bit—Cas dropped the rope and got his left hand under my knees, picking me up god damned bridal style. If I wasn’t so damned relieved to get off that ankle, I probably would have been pissed about being carried around like some helpless victim. The thing was, I was feeling pretty helpless at the moment. It wasn’t that I was happy with being carted around like some pathetic nobleman in distress, because I wasn’t, okay? But the pain eased up a little. “I’m sorry, Dean,” Cas said.

What the actual fuck? He was sorry? I was the asshole who went and got my ankle busted up. And shit, his eyes looked so sad. “I had no idea how badly you were hurt. I should have taken you back to the cabin right away.” He sat me back on the boxes on top of our sled. The other teams were slowly but surely pulling ahead of us. Not that I cared too much at that point. Cas leaned into me, pressing his forehead against mine. “I should have known you would act like it wasn’t as bad as it actually is. I’ll take you back and we’ll get you taken care of.” He looked so damned sad, like he was the one that broke my ankle or something. I kissed him, just to see if I could get a smile. And yeah, maybe also because I wasn’t quite over the fact that I could just do that, whenever I felt like it. He smiled—it was a little sad, but it was a smile all the same. 

“You got this, Cas. They’re getting away from you. Go win the race. I’ll be fine for the five minutes it takes to finish up here and get back to the cabin.” I touched his face gently, and he leaned into it. Yeah, that was all kinds of adorable. The smile he gave me this time was real, though. 

He took another second, taking off his coat and bunching it up under my ankle to elevate it. “Hold on, Dean,” he growled before I could complain about him giving up his coat, and then he was at the front of the sled. Holy shit. I honestly had no idea if he was using super angel speed or keeping to mere human speed. I just knew, damn, Cas was running. If I didn’t know elevating my ankle was a good idea, I probably would have tried to cover up in Cas’s jacket. That wind was fucking cold! Holy shit, how did it even get that cold so far south? 

But with what looked like no effort at all, Cas had caught up with and passed the last few couples in the race, and he was still gaining on the ones in front of us. Hell, he could have blinked and we’d be at the finish line, but he wasn’t doing that, he was flat out running. I could see his breath rising above his head in little white clouds, and his legs moved with an easy rhythm. God, what I wouldn’t give at that moment to see him in a pair of shorts, watching his muscles move as he ran, his tight ass… 

What? It would have been a good distraction from the pain, alright?

It was no real surprise when we won. I mean, who else had an angel of the freaking lord pulling for their team? But I was still pretty fucking proud of him. 

The other teams were cheering for us. Di, or someone in a red jacket, was trying to get our attention, but all I could see was Cas, coming closer to me. “Damn you’re amazing, baby.” I cringed at my own words. It slipped out so easily, instead of buddy, but that wasn’t what this was. Hell, Cas wasn’t a baby, he wasn’t smaller than me or younger than me, and he sure as shit wasn’t less powerful than me. 

He smiled, though, lifting me like he hadn’t run a fucking gauntlet dragging god knows how many pounds of boxes with me on top. “Now I know it’s something special,” he said, “no one gets compared with your Impala.”

My mouth dropped open. Shit. “Cas, no! I didn’t mean…”

He shushed me. “I know, Dean. Would you like to walk back to the cabin?”

Would I? Yeah. That would probably be the smart thing to do. Especially if we wanted them to think that a few hours of rest would cure me. But Cas was warm and it felt good in his arms. I shook my head. 

“Very well.” He carried me bridal style back to our room. It was a little weird. I could never get used to being carried around like a baby, but I could definitely get comfortable with the feeling of Cas’s arms around me, and resting my head against his chest.


	7. Chapter 7

The first thing Cas did when we got back to the cabin, after he sat me on the fancy bed, was to call Sam. “Dean’s been hurt.” He sounded so serious someone would have thought I was bleeding out or something.

For fuck’s sake. Of course I could hear Sam freaking the hell out on the other side of the line. “Cas! Give me the damned phone!”

“He’s fine, Sam. I can heal him.”

“Can heal him? You haven’t yet?” Sam’s tinny voice rang through the speakers of the phone.

“Yes, can. I haven’t yet because even after I’ve healed him, it’s important that he rest. And he’s not going to rest if he thinks that the other guests at the hotel aren’t adequately protected.”

I couldn’t hear what Sam said after that. “Sam, I know,” Cas answered. Sam must have been really railing into him. 

“Are you sure?” he asked. Like Sam couldn’t handle himself. Shit, if Sam got into trouble, he could call Cas. Even if I was supposed to be on bed rest, which was a fucking stupid idea if I was already healed, Cas could gank damn near anything that reared it’s ugly head.

“I’m glad you agree he needs his rest. I’ll stay with him to make sure he gets an adequate amount before tomorrow.” Sam said something on the other side of the line. “Yes, I’ll call you if we need anything. Same goes for you, Sam.”

“He didn’t want to talk to me?” I asked when Cas hung up and sat on the bed. The movement jarred my ankle, making me grimace. I tried to hide it, but Cas was paying too much attention now.

“I’m sure he did, but Sam seemed to think it best if you get as much rest as possible. He assures me he’ll keep an eye out for anything strange tonight, and call if he needs backup.” He grimaced and looked down at my swollen ankle, pushing the jeans away from it. “I doubt he’ll need us in any case.”

“You know, I’ve had worse than this,” I said heartily, trying to pull some of the bitterness out of his voice. It really wasn’t that bad, especially knowing it would be fine any minute.

He laid two fingers against my skin, and despite how softly he tried to touch me, it hurt for a second before the warm glow of his grace soothed my body, setting the busted up bones back together and healing them like nothing had happened.

“Thanks,” I whispered, kind of in awe that I had a friend—damn, more than that now—who could heal like that. He looked up at me, surprised by something. “What?” I asked.

Cas stood quickly, heading over to the little table across the room. “Nothing, sorry.”

I stood, testing my ankle. Not surprisingly, it held. I strode across the room, my hand landing heavily on Cas’s shoulder. I tried to turn him, but he didn’t budge. The number of times he’s let me spin him with one hand, I just forgot human strength didn’t mean much to him, or maybe I assumed he would just turn and face me. 

But he didn’t. He didn’t look at me at all. “Hey,” I said softly, reaching up with my other hand and rubbing his shoulders. “Hey, sunshine. What’s wrong?”

“You thanked me.” It came out as a grunt.

Holy shit, is that…did I not normally thank him or something? Was it that big of a surprise? I thought back, and no, I’d never bothered to thank him, because fuck, I’d never deserved to be healed. Shit. 

“Cas, hey, hey now. I’m sorry.” I tried again to turn him, and this time he allowed it. “I never meant for you to think I wasn’t grateful. You were never just…” Fuck, how could I explain this to him… “You were never just a tool. I never like, expected that from you, or whatever. And if I wasn’t such an ass, I would have thanked you before. Because you didn’t have to do it. Not ever. But you did. So thank you.”

Cas leaned forward, and I met him halfway, our lips meeting for just a split second before the knocking sounded outside the door. When he pulled away, Cas was smiling. “Sit, rest that ankle. I’ll get it.”

The ankle was fine, but as much as I wanted to be out there fighting monsters, I also really wanted to just stay in the cabin. Let the world’s problems belong to someone else for a little while, pretend it was just me and Cas, like a real couple, with a real apple pie kind of life, enjoying the weekend. If there’s one thing I knew, real life would find a way to come crashing back, sooner rather than later. Hell, the knock on the door was probably someone coming for help already. But damn, for the first time in a long time, I wanted to stay in the fantasy, just a little longer. I sat, for what it was worth, watching Cas walk to the door that would probably pull us right back to reality.

He poked his head outside, said a few words I couldn’t understand, and then came back in with a picnic basket, similar to the one we’d been given for lunch the day before. I couldn’t help the smile that settled over my features. Maybe we didn’t have to give this up just yet.

“Since you’re laid up, they were kind enough to send our dinner to our room,” Cas said, sitting the basket on the table between us.

“I could get used to this,” I said, standing to open the basket, but Cas brushed my hands away and looked pointedly at the chair until I sat back down. He started to serve, bringing out some kind of nuts. They weren’t bad, but they weren’t exactly meat or anything. And how do you have a conversation over a handful of nuts? But Cas wouldn’t let me into the basket to see what else might be hiding in there. He talked about the “fragrant thyme” and who the hell knows what else. Like I said, good, but not what I wanted. 

The next course, which Cas served again—because apparently he decided I was a damned invalid—was some kind of spicy sausage and shellfish thing in some kind of sauce. “This is way too fancy for me,” I said, eying up something I’d probably never be able to pronounce.

“Just try it,” Cas said. “If you don’t like it, I’m sure there are brownies at the bottom of the basket.”

I took a bite. “Holy shit, Cas. This is fucking fantastic. You have to try it.”

He smiled, taking my fork and spearing some of my food to try. “Sadly, I can’t even enjoy the spiciness.”

“Oh my god, Cas. That sucks. We need to fix that. Food is the best.”

He squeezed my hand with his free hand before giving me the fork. “You wouldn’t want that, Dean. If I could taste food again, that would mean I was human. I’m not much use that way.”

I dropped the fork, reaching up to grab his face. “Hey, we talked about this. I thought you got it, Cas. Cursed or not, human or angel, it doesn’t matter. I want you, whatever that means. This body or another…although that could get a little weird. This is your body now, right? You’re not riding some dude’s meat suit?”

“I promise, this is my body Dean.”

“Alright,” I said, smiling broadly. 

We chatted a little more over dinner, I don’t even remember what we were talking about. It was nice, quiet. Not what you expect from a hunter, or a couple of hunters, but it was pretty cool for a change.

I was pretty damned stuffed from dinner, especially since I got to eat part of Cas’s portion too, but that didn’t mean I didn’t have room for some of those awesome brownies. I stood up, just to check if there were any in the basket, and Cas tried to push my hands away. “Sit down, Dean, please. Let me do that for you.”

I pushed him off. “Damn it Cas, I’m not made of glass. You healed me. Trust yourself.”

He looked down. “I’m sorry,” he said. He looked like a kicked puppy. Shit. I had a lot to learn about this relationship crap.

“Don’t be sorry,” I said, squeezing his hand. It felt strong under mine. Different from reassuring Lisa or Cassie or any of a dozen other people I’d been with. Cas was real and solid in my hand. “Fuck, we’re both gonna’ screw shit up, man. That’s just part of being alive. If we keep falling over each other with sorry, we’ll never get another word in.”

“But—”

“No. None of that gushy feelings crap. Well, maybe sometimes, but not over this, okay? I told you what was bothering me. Unless you’re going to force the issue and spoon feed me the rest of the day, we don’t have a problem.” He looked up then, trying to figure me out. Or maybe he was trying to figure out the whole relationship thing. Damned if I knew. Hell, I was still trying to figure it out myself.

He frowned at me, sulking. “I do trust myself. I even trust you. It’s your fragile human body that I’m not sure about.”

I glared at him. I was not fragile. Show me one other person who’d get that far on a broken ankle.

His answering sigh as he sat down was as over-dramatic as it was all kinds of fucking adorable. “I like to do things for you, but you can get your own food if you must.”

I leaned over to kiss him. When did I get so lucky? The kiss was pretty damned nice. And with Sam watching over the hotel, we’d have a few hours to kill. Maybe after dessert we could see where things took us. Hell yeah, that sounded like an amazing idea.

And because life is fucking awesome sometimes, there was a big stack of brownies wrapped in waxed paper at the bottom of the basket. When I lifted it out, a piece of paper that had been stuck to the bottom fluttered to the floor. I picked the up, but didn’t bother to look at it; it was probably a packing slip or something. Do they have those for lunches?

First things first, I unwrapped the brownies. I took the first bite, blushing when I caught Cas watching me. Damn it. I hadn’t meant to blush, but all of a sudden all I could think about was the two of us sitting over this same picnic basket yesterday, him feeding me the brownie with that soft look on his face, the look that said I actuallly meant something to him. Yeah, if I kept this train of thought up, Cas and I would definitely be having a moment or two after dessert. I reached in the basket to distract myself with the papers.

_Carnelian Sunset Resort and Spa  
Couple’s Weekend Survey_

The splash of red across the tri-fold pamphlet still seemed fucking creepy, especially since we were there over people getting murdered. Sometimes I just didn’t get people. I mean, sure, they weren’t going to change their logo just because of a tragedy last week. Even if they were, it wouldn’t have happened this quickly, but did they not notice the nasty blood connection when they sent these things to the printers the first time?

The first page had all of the usual questions. I ticked through them, trying to keep my mind on something other than the night I was about to spend with Cas…my boyfriend…sharing a bed…

_How friendly were the staff members?_ Pretty friendly if you don’t count that half of them were bat-shit crazy. In one case too damn friendly. I debated putting Munny’s name down as behaving inappropriately, but Cas had promised his ass we wouldn’t get him fired, so I’d have to keep my mouth shut.

_How easy was check in?_ Well, if Di wasn’t talking our ear off it would have been just fine.

_How clean was your room when you arrived?_ Hell, I can’t remember a time I stayed in a place this nice.

_How well did housekeeping clean your room during your stay?_ There was housekeeping? Damned if I knew. The room was fine though.

_How well equipped was your room?_ Needed beer.

_How pleased were you with the quality of the food?_ I could eat those brownies every day for the rest of my life.

_Who killed Adriana and Scott Shoemaker?_

Wait…what the fuck?

_Why?_

How was that even on the survey? Was this some kind of weird as fuck limbo world?

“Cas?” I asked. I’m sure he must have heard in my voice that I was just a little freaked out. 

“What’s wrong?”

I handed him the paper. “Does this say what I think it says?”

Cas looked it over for a second before putting the pamphlet down on the table. “Dean,” he said, his hand raised like I was some kind of frightened animal, and yeah, I might have been getting close to that, not going to lie. “Let me explain.”

I nodded. Yeah. That sounded awesome. At least if Cas knew why the whole world was crazy things couldn’t be that bad.

“I swear I didn’t know when we drove up here, but... there’s no case and, well, apparently there’s no monster either.”

I gestured at the paper, “Well clearly someone’s dead. Because it’s right there in their paper too!”

“No, it’s—Calm down, please.” 

“This is fucking calm, Cas!” I stood up, I needed to get rid of some of this energy, walk it off. My chair clattered up against the wall. It’s not like it hit the wall hard, so I’d say I was doing pretty damned good. 

I could see Cas’s expression tense up. “There’s really no case here. I heard some of the guest talking about it right before lunch. You were looking for our clothes.

“It wasn’t real,” he continued. “The Shoemakers were characters.”

“Characters?”

“Samir called it a ‘Murder Mystery Weekend.’ Apparently this is a thing humans do, try to solve the mystery for fun.”

I sat heavily. “So all of this,” I gestured at everything, not even really paying attention, “it was bullshit.” 

Cas wouldn’t look at me. Fuck. He knew. He fucking knew what was going on and he lied to me. “Not everything,” he wasn’t loud anymore, like he was asking me to understand. Fuck that. He could have told me. “Not what was happening between the two of us.”

I scoffed rolling my eyes as I paced the floor, just trying to keep from hauling off and hitting him. 

“I was going to tell you, Dean. I should have known something was off the first night, after we went to dinner.”

“And you decided not to share with the fucking class?”

“You and Sam seemed so convinced there was something here… And I’ll admit, I...I had feelings for you, and thought this might let you explore any feelings you had for me safely.”

I could feel my jaw twitch, it was clenched so tight. “Yeah, well, it doesn’t exactly work like that, Cas, you know? ‘Cause having feelings for someone, yeah, that’s important. But when that someone fucking lies to you about something big? The rest of the feelings don’t fucking matter.”

I grabbed my coat and Baby’s keys, and trudged out into the snow. I was damned well ready to leave Castiel and this stupid fucking resort bullshit far behind me.

o0o

The air inside the Impala was cold and stale. No one had been inside all weekend, and that just felt all kinds of wrong. I’d been kinda pissed the last time I drove her too. Not this pissed though. Damn it. Damn Castiel and Sam both.

Alright, so maybe I’m not the most open guy in the world. But if Sam knew so damned much, he could have… Well fuck, he didn’t have to trick me into coming here. It’s not like we don’t take a vacation when we can—we go to Vegas every year if we’re not trying to save the world. He could have just said, “Hey, Cas is family. He needs to come on vacation with us.” God, that would have been fucking awesome.

And Cas… shit. Every damn time he lies the whole fucking world goes to shit. Every time. 

I pounded on the steering wheel in frustration, then turned the ignition. I was getting the hell out of this stupid fucking place with their stupid fucking fake murders.

Driving was something I could do, no matter what I was feeling. Just me and the open road. Or, well, me and the long ass road back to civilization. Whatever, it was peaceful. Just me and my thoughts.

Fucking furious. How dare they? Those bastards. Fucking with my emotions over some sick, twisted version of what they wanted for me. Didn’t even give a damn about what I wanted, just what they thought I should have. The next time I saw those two assholes, I was going to give them one hell of a piece of my mind.

“Hello, Dean.”

“Son of a bitch!” I hit the brakes, feeling Baby fishtail over the snow before I got her steady again. Cas, the fucker, had done his magical angel bullshit and just appeared in the passenger seat. “How the hell did you find me?”

“There’s only one road back to the highway. Once I realized you’d taken the car, it wasn’t hard to find a quiet spot and wait for you to pass.”

“Yeah, well. You’re not fucking welcome here, Cas. Not that what I think made any god damned difference to you before, but get the hell out of my car.”

“Do you have an angel blade?” What the fuck? I just glared at him. “Because short of stabbing me to death, you’re not getting rid of me that easily. I suppose you could trap me in holy oil, but I doubt you’d risk burning your car.”

“I’m not going to fucking stab you, asshole. Just get out.”

He just sat there like this was an everyday thing, him lying to me. Hell, maybe it was. 

“As far as I can see, Dean, this can go a few different ways. You stop the car and we have a discussion here, in the cold. You stop the car and I fly us back to the hotel.” I glared at him. No way was I leaving Baby alone on this road. “You don’t stop the car and I fly us back anyway.” 

I opened my mouth, so furious I could hardly form words. “I suppose that would just be par for the course at this point, huh Cas? You do whatever makes you happy. I’m just some dumb human, so it doesn’t really matter what I think, right?”

“Or—” he continued, like he was the one pissed at me for cutting him off. Like he had any god-damned right. “—You can turn this car around, drive back to the lodge, and we can have this conversation like civilized adults.”

“Civilized adults? You want to talk about civilized adults, Castiel? Because last I checked, you’re the damned child playing games. You seemed to think it was just fine to lie to me, if it got you what you wanted in the end. So did it work? Did you win? Was the sex worth it? Was it everything you hoped it would be?”

I had to keep myself in check. He looked stunned; I hoped it hurt him. I hadn’t exactly counted on it hurting me as much as it did, but fuck. I deserved it. He laid out a line and I fell for it. I should have known the place was crap, but he and Sam seemed so sure. I should have known better. I just wanted it to be fucking real. “Get out,” I ground out. I was not going to fucking cry, not in front of Cas. Not over this.

“That’s not one of the options, Dean.” He couldn’t meet my eyes, but his voice was robotic. His tall frame looked like it had closed in on itself.

“I said get out!” I slammed on the brakes, the car fishtailing out of control. I swear it was only a second, but she spun out. We were headed sideways into the tree line. I got enough control to even her out a little, but with the ice, we still hit. 

“Damn it!” I leaned over the wheel. Big gulps of air caught coldly in my lungs. It would be okay. Baby wasn’t in bad shape. She was a tough old girl. There’d be a few nasty dents and scratches on the driver’s side, but I could still drive her.

“Dean?” Cas’s voice was laced with concern.

“Not now, Cas.” I could hear my voice crack. Shit.

“Dean, breathe! Everything will be okay.”

“Of course everything will be okay!” I felt the first tear slip from my eye, cold against my skin. “I mean, fuck. Nothing is ever okay, there’s always something trying to end the world, but this? This is nothing. I just need some fucking time, Cas. I can get over this and we can go on working together. I just need time.”

He drummed one finger on his knee, slowly, and not in any kind of rhythm. It was starting to get on my nerves. “If I give you time first,” he sounded quiet and hopeful, “can we talk about it?”

My fingers ran through my hair. “That kind of defeats the purpose of me getting over it.”

“Then this is me asking to talk about it now. You can ‘get over it’ after we talk.” And damn if he didn’t do the finger quotes.

“You can’t just force me to talk about this shit. Not when I’m pissed.”

“I’m not forcing you to do anything, Dean. But I want to talk. And for what it’s worth, I’m sorry for deceiving you.”

My shoulders slumped. “Why, Cas?”

“I don’t have a good reason. When I thought this was a real case, I wanted…”

“What?”

“I wanted to experience a human relationship. I’ve tried before, but it’s always failed. I told myself this was only temporary, so I could enjoy the experience without being disappointed when it was over.”

“Okay, fine. But that doesn’t explain why you didn’t say anything when you found out that Sam was bullshitting us.”

“I only knew for a couple of hours, Dean. But the time we’ve spent together this weekend, I liked it. I liked it because I was with you. I had anticipated being able to pretend to love you the entire weekend; I didn’t want to give it up so soon. I told myself that I wouldn’t say anything to you until I was sure. I talked to your brother, and he suggested I ‘ride it out,’ and ‘see what happens.’ It was only one more night, I told myself it wouldn’t hurt. But I don’t enjoy lying to you. It doesn’t feel like a tactical deception, it…hurts. It’s a physical pain in my chest that my grace can’t find and won’t heal.”

I scoffed. “Maybe you should have listened to the warning.” The words were soft. It took too much energy to look up at him.

“I should have,” he said. “But I was selfish. Except for the lying, I was enjoying myself. And most of the afternoon, it was easy enough to lie to myself, pretend we both knew this was a vacation. You let me touch you, Dean. And smile with you. And other…amazing things. I wanted to keep them for as long as I could. Because you’d never allow me to in any other circumstances. And I’m sorry.”

“Not never.” My words barely raised over the howling wind.

“I need to know what you mean,” the hand on my arm was gentle. An awkward laugh forced its way up from my chest.

“Fuck. There’s about a million ways this could have gone better, but nothing would have happened between us if I wasn’t already interested.”

“I didn’t know.”

“Yeah, well. I guess we both have to get better at not keeping things from each other.”

His hand squeezed against my arm. It should have made me mad, but it just felt kind of nice. “I guess we do.” I looked up finally, to see him smiling softly at me. I guess I was wearing a pretty sappy expression myself. “In the interest of better communication, I would really like to kiss you now.”

Something was holding me back. “Cas…” I wished I knew what was still not right.

“You can say no, Dean. I know I don’t deserve it, I know I lied to you. But I would like the chance to try again.

And maybe I should have said no. There was a part of me screaming that I didn’t deserve this. That neither of us did because all the times we’d fucked each other over. But most of me was already reaching to close the distance. I stopped less than an inch from his face and pulled back. “This is it, sunshine. We do this here, now? We’re a team. No more making decisions alone that affect us both. No more hiding shit. I’m serious.”

“Not even if I’m planning to surprise you with something special? That’s a part of human courtship rituals, isn’t it?”

I groaned. “Don’t call it courtship. That’s so fucking weird. If you have to call it something just say we’re dating. And at least for now, no surprises.”

“That sounds reasonable.”

I smirked. “Kiss me to seal the deal?”

“That only works with demons, Dean.” But he was smiling, so I counted it as a fucking win.

“Eh. With our track record, anything is worth a shot.” The kiss was…nice, not rushed or passionate or any of that crap. Just kind of relaxed.

“We still have that cabin to ourselves for the night, Dean.” I looked into his eyes, and there was no question what he was suggesting. 

I turned the car around, promising her silently that I’d work out all the scratches as soon as we got back to the bunker. But just for a little while longer, this was my time. Mine and Cas’s.

**Author's Note:**

> For AutumnSwitch who was there at the beginning, and AnonAnton, who was there through the end.
> 
> Whew! This is the longest thing I've ever written ever! I hope you enjoyed. It was a fun idea to play around with. Please, I'd love any kind of comments or kudos, but make sure you send your love to Deancebra for the amazing, last minute art!


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